(2) PS Illustrated by Nina Dzyvulska. A colorful array of monsters takes over the pages of this rhyming picture book. Baker’s zany verses, dynamically typeset to mirror the frenetic energy, take readers on a whirlwind tour of the monsters’ Christmas shenanigans and make for a great read-aloud: “­JOYFUL monster, / TOY-FUL ­monster, / filling up a sack. / ­PEEKING monster, / SNEAKING monster, / HEY NOW, give that back!” Dzyvulska’s illustrations, outlined in bold black lines and colored in bright hues, provide a visual smorgasbord of details to pore over. An appended prompt sends readers back to the beginning to find Santa Monster in every spread.

Reviewer: | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2023

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Hannah Peck. A girl describes her nightly journey with "my friend Sleep" through various happiness-making dreamscapes (a land of sweets, a fair) and the occasional spooky scene ("Sometimes Sleep takes me to places that scare me a little"). Sleep, who resembles a child in a semitransparent gray snowsuit, is a marvelous invention, but the mainly blue-and-orange-hued art is awfully frantic for an intended soporific story.

Reviewer: Nell Beram