Just a Snowy Day by Mercer Mayer (HarperFestival, 2006)

Little Critter wants to go out and play in the snow. He puts on his smooth, shiny boots, his hat with the fuzzy pom-pom, and his coat with the warm, fuzzy lining. As he gets dressed, young readers can feel his boots, hat, and coat in this cute, interactive book.

Very young readers will love playing with Little Critter as he has fun in the snow, warms up inside, and goes to bed.  Open the door for Little Critter. Make him wobble on the ice. Feel the smooth, shiny icicles. Give his sled a pull. Smell his hot chocolate. Help him take a shower by pulling the shower curtain open. And finally, tuck him into bed with a warm, soft blanket.

This is a good lap book for adults and kids to enjoy together.

Just So Thankful by Mercer Mayer (HarperFestival, 2006)

From the well-known Little Critter series comes this new title, Just So Thankful. Little Critter wants a Super Streak Scooter, but doesn’t have enough money to buy it. Instead of being thankful for all the toys he does have as his mother suggests, he sulks because he can’t have the terrific scooter.

Then a new kid moves into the neighborhood, and wow! He’s riding a Super Scooter. In fact, the new boy, H.H., has tons of wonderful toys — and a maid, a cook, a swimming pool, his own cell phone, and more. Little Critter and his friends have a great time at H.H.’s house, and wish they were so lucky.

Little Critter can’t imagine why H.H. would want to play at his house. He’d be so bored without all the cool stuff to play with. But Little Critter invites him over anyway. That’s when Little Critter learns through H.H.’s eyes that he’s a lucky critter, too, and has a whole lot to be thankful for.

This book would make a nice read-aloud to help kids understand the concept of being thankful. Sometimes what looks like “no fair” to us looks like “wow, you’re lucky” to someone else.
One quibble that readers may have with this Little Critter book is the stereotypical way in which gender roles are depicted: boys roughouse, make messes, like dogs, and wear blue. Girls are neat, play with tea sets, like cats, and wear pink. Women wear long dresses, while men wear pants. Parents and teachers might use the illustrations to discuss gender roles.

This book is also available in Spanish: Tan Agradecido.

I Am the Turkey by Michele Sobel Spirn, illustrated by Joy Allen (HarperTrophy, 2004).

Mark’s second grade class is going to put on a Thanksgiving play. Mark hopes he’ll get a good part: a Pilgrim, maybe, or an Indian. To his surprise, he’s assigned the role of a turkey. His teacher says it’s a good part because without a turkey, there can’t be a Thanksgiving. But oh, boy! When the other kids find out that he’s a turkey, the teasing begins: “Mark’s the class turkey!” Mark’s brother chimes right in. “The Pilgrims and Indians eat you,” he reminds Mark.

Mark tries everything to get out of being a turkey. Still, the show must go on, and before the end of the show, Mark learns that turkeys are important. Sometimes a turkey can save the whole show!

With its bright, whimsical illustrations by Joy Allen and its accessible language, this seasonal book will appeal to young readers who are ready for a little challenge. It’s also a great read-aloud book for the Thanksgiving season.

Octagon Magic by Andre Norton (1967; reprint 2005 by Starscape)

Second in Andre Norton’s Magic Books series, Octagon Magic is Norton at her best and most surreal in children’s fiction.

Lorrie Mallard lived with her grandmother in Canada until her grandmother became sick and had to be cared for by a friend. Now living in the U.S. with an aunt, homesick Lorrie has trouble fitting in. She doesn’t like gossip, giggling, and listening to pop music with the girl next door. She hates it when the boys on the street call her Canuck and chase her around. But when they chase a kitten that belongs to the mysterious Octagon House, where a witch supposedly lives, Lorrie runs to the kitten’s rescue — and finds escape for herself as well.

For Octagon House holds its own secrets. Gentle Miss Ashemeade couldn’t be less like a wicked witch, nor is her cook, Hallie. Miss Ashemeade sits at an embroidery frame, surrounded by fine threads and special golden needles, and her sitting room is lined with museum-quality needlework. She teaches Lorrie some of her art, but more, she allows Lorrie to explore any room of the house — that is, any room that will allow her in. And the room that calls to her is the room that contains a miniature Octagon House. No mere plaything is this dollhouse. Keys appear in the drawers at the base. Lifelike dolls inhabit the drawers. And when she places the dolls and rides the magnificent rocking horse that stands near the house, Lorrie is transported into the past to witness the secrets of Octagon House.

Who — or what — is Miss Ashemeade? Is she really as old as Lorrie’s rockinghorse visions seem to tell her? Who is Hallie? What ever happened to the people who sought and found refuge at Octagon House? And what will happen to Miss Ashemeade if the plans to run a new superhighway straight through the Octagon House property are approved? Can Lorrie and her friends save Octagon House?

Steel Magic by Andre Norton (1965; Starscape reprint, 1995)

Though the great science fiction writer Andre Norton has passed away, her work lives on forever. Norton wrote for all ages, and her works for young people received no less care, attention, and imagination than her books for adults.

Starscape is now reprinting Norton’s beloved Magic Books series of middle-grade novels. Though a series, each book stands alone, with a separate cast of characters.

Steel Magic is a classic quest tale. Three children, visiting their uncle somewhere in New England, set out to explore the overrun gardens and woods, planted a generation or two ago by a mysterious Mr. Brosius, who then disappeared. Fans of Arthurian legends will come to instant alert at that name — Brosius? Ambrosius? As in the surname sometimes ascribed to Merlin?

But of course.

The boys, Eric and Greg, want to find a lake that supposedly lies in the tangle of woods. Their sister, Sara, tags along, the picnic basket she won at a fun fair firmly in hand, despite her terror of spiders. They find the lake, and in the middle of it, find the ruin of a small castle. Thinking it no more than a folly built by the former owners, the children enter — and find not a playhouse, but a doorway to Avalon.

There they find Avalon in serious trouble from dark forces. Only they who are capable of touching cold iron can find the three treasures that have been lost, but only if they can overcome their own fears. With the help of magical guides and the steel utensils in the picnic basket, Sara, Eric, and Greg set out to save Avalon and their own world.

While the pattern of the story and the ending are somewhat predictable, the telling of the three children’s adventures reveals Norton’s halmark imagination and surreal visions of her fantasy worlds.

Amazing Snakes! by Sara L. Thompson, photographs by the Wildlife Conservation Society (HarperCollins, 2006).

Big snakes and little snakes. Snakes that jump from trees and snakes that slither on the ground. Green snakes, black snakes, striped and spotted snakes. Poisonous snakes and harmless snakes. Snakes that eat mice or fish, snakes that eat birds or bats, and even snakes that eat crocodiles. If you like snakes, this is the book for you!

Sarah L. Thomson uses simple language, short sentences, and pronunciation guides within the text to create an engaging book on the lives of snakes. Emerging readers ready for Level 2 “I Can Read” books should have little trouble making their way through the text, and the brilliant photographs will help hold a reader’s attention. In brief passages, page by page, Thomson describes different kinds of snakes around the world, their methods of catching and eating their prey, their use of camoflauge, and their life cycles. At the end, Thomson describes how snakes are a necessary part of the environment and why it pays to protect snakes. She also discusses how scientists study snakes.

Written for the emerging reader, the book would also be an excellent choice for a reluctant reader who has an interest in creepy creatures.

The Six Fools by Zora Neale Hurston, adapted by Joyce Carol Thomas, illustrated by Ann Tanksley (HarperCollins, 2006)

When a foolish bride-to-be and her parents let a cask of apple cider floods her basement while daydreaming about the name of her future child, her young man declares he won’t have her until he finds three fools bigger than the ones sitting in the pool of cider.

And find them he does, as he encounters a man trying to jump into his clothes, a farmer trying to get a cow to eat the grass on the barn roof, and a woman trying to push a wheelbarrow of sunshine into her house to dry her scrubbed floor. After all this foolishness, will the young man finally have his bride back?

Zora Neale Hurston traveled the Gulf States in the 1930’s to gather and preserve the rich oral history and legacy of the African-American people of the south.  The Six Fools was among the many tales she recorded. Now Joyce Carol Thomas retells the tale for young people. Ann Tanksley’s raw and vibrant illustrations capture a retro 30’s looks, fitting the times in which the story was first recorded. Their child-like charm captures the exuberance of this tall tale.

The Wright 3 by Blue Balliett, illustrated by Brett Helquist (Scholastic Press, 2006)

In Blue Balliett’s sequel to the fantasy mystery Chasing Vermeer, Calder Pillay’s old friend Tommy Segovia returns to Chicago’s University School one week before the end of the school year. But everything has changed for Tommy. He no longer lives across the street from Calder, but instead lives in an apartment overlooking Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Robie house, several blocks away. And Calder went and made friends with a girl Tommy hardly knows, one Petra Andalee. Tommy longs to do something that will create a big splash so that he can feel important. When the class learns that the Robie house has been slated for demolition, and the class makes a decision to save it, Tommy searches for a chance to find an important clue. But Calder’s insistence that he make friends with Petra creates rifts among all three, and they set out, like points of a triangle, in three directions, chasing down clues about fish, dragons, and the Invisible Man, all to save the Robie house from demolition — and from thieves.

As in Chasing Vermeer, The Wright 3 weaves together solid clues and fantastic events into one satisfying mystery, but the fantasy elements are even more evident: a mysterious cloaked man who tosses a copy of The Invisible Man from a train, an identical copy to the one Petra picked up at a bookstore; a jade fish that Tommy finds that may be the very fish Frank Lloyd Wright carried as a talisman; and the Robie house itself, that shrugs villains off of its roof and speaks in whispers to its friends.

Brett Helquist’s charming illustrations weave a story of their own. Readers should search them for signs of an animal that is important in the story, and watch for its transformation at the end.

Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett, illustrated by Brett Helquist (Scholastic Press, 2004).

If you like your mysteries with a touch of fantasy, then Chasing Vermeer is for you. When a well-known Vermeer painting goes missing, sixth graders Calder Pillay and Petra Andalee decide to track it down. First working alone as rivals, the two must join forces to make sense of patterns, coincidence, and the significance of blue M&Ms to unravel the mystery before the thief makes good on his promise to destroy the priceless painting.

Author Blue Balliett fills her fantasy mystery with delightful quirks of place and character. Her two youthful detectives live in Hyde Park in Chicago, where they attend the University School, founded by John Dewey and running on very student-centered principles. Petra and Calder’s teacher, Miss Hussey, seems youthful and scatterbrained, but holds a mystery or two herself — as does the elderly Mrs. Sharp that the children befriend. Calder carries around a set of pentominoes, a twelve-piece set of mathematical tools used to explore geometry, and which Calder uses to explore patterns related to the mystery. Petra has a penchant for writing and uses writing to clarify her ideas. But she also seems to have a hidden talent for “hearing” people who aren’t there — including the woman in the Vermeer painting.

Brett Helquist’s illustrations portray the characters perfectly, and hide an additional mystery: within the illustrations, readers can hunt for hidden pentominoes that spell out a secret message.

Mummies: The Newest, Coolest, & Creepiest from Around the World by Shelly Tanaka (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2005)

What is it about mummies that is so fascinating? Is it coming literally face-to-face with someone from the distant past? Is it the extraordinary amount of information a mummy reveals about the culture it came from? Or is it just that mummies are creepy, and we all love a shiver?

Shelly Tanaka takes the reader on an around-the-world journey to look at some of the most famous — and infamous — mummies that have been unearthed. Unlike other books that focus on Egypt, Tanaka begins in the Americas, home to the oldest mummies known. There, bodies might simply be dried in desert sands, or elaborately prepared by dismemberment, drying, and reassembly into clay-covered puppet-like figures. There are mummies that are probably sacrifices to Inca gods, to a body accidentally frozen over 500 years ago in a glacier in British Columbia.

The tale turns to Egypt, home of the most famous mummies, and tells about a modern Egyptian mummy, made by researchers from a donated body to study how Ancient Egyptians preserved their dead. The mystery of young Tutankhamen’s death (illness? accident? or murder?) is explored. A trip northward to Europ takes us into the land of the bog bodies, where people who were either sacrificed or executed (no one knows for sure) were tossed into the bogs, where strong tannic acids preserved them. After a look at the Iceman, found in Italy, and some puzzling mummies in Ireland, the tale moves to Asia, where tall, Caucasian-looking bodies were mummified in northern China. No one knows who these people were, nor how they got there. Nomads, perhaps?

Finally, the book goes where many mummy books never tread: modern mummies. There is the bizzare practice of self-mummification by Buddhist monks in the Himalayan mountains. There are cadavers preserved by plastination, partically-dissected and used in a modern educational museum show (ew! ew! ew!). There are the bodies of Eva Peron, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedong, preserved with chemicals, and placed on display.

This book is a must for any young mummy fan who is interested in more unusual mummies. It is illustrated throughout by colorful photographs, some of which are not for the faint of heart!