(3) 4-6 This comprehensive guide to planning a creative and cool sleepover will appeal to a wide variety of girls. Chapters cover choosing a theme and being a good hostess, as well as the rules for easy indoor and outdoor games, making inexpensive crafts, and following simple recipes. Candid photos of smiling girls at parties accompany the cleanly designed, colorfully vibrant pages. Ind.

Reviewer: Amanda Mc. MacGregor

(3) 4-6 Illustrated by Ian Phillips & Ian Phillips. This improbably amusing primer aims to teach kids how to stay solvent and even philanthropic while navigating consumer culture. Advice ranges from the standard--saving money, budgeting, investing--to the inspired: finding a "money mentor," bartering with friends, following the "Immediate Gratification Blaster" program. Scattered throughout are quizzes and cartoony images of children with round, outsize heads suggestive of coins. Ind.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Blanche L. Sims. This well-meaning guide to all things chalk presents the history of chalk, a recipe for making sidewalk chalk, and a myriad of chalk-play ideas. Most useful are the suggested games, such as hopscotch and four square. Many suggestions are fun (drawing a city, making a maze), but some are a bit of a stretch (word search, chalk scrabble), making the whole more than enough of a good thing. Ind.

Reviewer: Susan Halperin