(3) PS Translated by Teresa Mlawer. A chameleon is dissatisfied that he does not have an identifying color--until he meets another chameleon and they decide to change colors together. This board book edition (smaller than the original picture book published in 1975) includes Spanish text alongside the English. Both the color concept and Lionni's art are perfect for the audience--in both languages.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth

(4) K-3 Step into Reading series. Two of Lionni's classic fables are reissued for young readers. The illustrations are fundamentally unchanged, but the easy-reader format demands a new layout. The now-leveled text is arranged across the top of each narrow page with art shoehorned below. Kids who aren't familiar with the more-expansive picture books may enjoy discovering Lionni's strong stories and imaginative art. Review covers these Step into Reading titles: An Extraordinary Egg and Fish Is Fish.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth | Horn Book Magazine Issue: February, 1971

(4) K-3 Step into Reading series. Two of Lionni's classic fables are reissued for young readers. The illustrations are fundamentally unchanged, but the easy-reader format demands a new layout. The now-leveled text is arranged across the top of each narrow page with art shoehorned below. Kids who aren't familiar with the more-expansive picture books may enjoy discovering Lionni's strong stories and imaginative art. Review covers these Step into Reading titles: An Extraordinary Egg and Fish Is Fish.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth

(4) K-3 Step into Reading series. These two Caldecott Honor books are reissued as beginning readers. Lionni's text and illustrations work reasonably well in this smaller format. Some text is printed over the illustrations, and the large, clean design of the original pages is lost. However, fans may enjoy revisiting the stories on their own. The font is larger and broken into shorter lines, making the (now-leveled) texts more accessible. Review covers these Step into Reading titles: Alexander and the Wind-up Mouse and Frederick

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth | Horn Book Magazine Issue: April, 1967

(4) K-3 Step into Reading series. These two Caldecott Honor books are reissued as beginning readers. Lionni's text and illustrations work reasonably well in this smaller format. Some text is printed over the illustrations, and the large, clean design of the original pages is lost. However, fans may enjoy revisiting the stories on their own. The font is larger and broken into shorter lines, making the (now-leveled) texts more accessible. Review covers these Step into Reading titles: Alexander and the Wind-up Mouse and Frederick

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth | Horn Book Magazine Issue: April, 1970

(2) PS This fiftieth-anniversary edition of the 1964 Caldecott Honor Book includes a new "tribute from Eric Carle" and a poster. Little black fish Swimmy, lone survivor in a school of red ones, devises an ingenious scheme for protecting a new school of fish friends. Lionni's series of astonishingly beautiful seascapes are full of undulating watery nuances of shape, pattern, and color.

Reviewer: Kitty Flynn | Horn Book Magazine Issue: August, 1963

(2) PS Lionni's first picture book is now available in board-book format. The transfer is effortless; no pages or text are missing, nothing is cropped or cut off. Illustrated with bright colors and simple geometric shapes, Lionni's minimalist story about the friendship between two different colored dots will appeal to the intended audience of very young children, fifty-plus years after its original publication.

Reviewer: Cynthia K. Ritter | Horn Book Magazine Issue: February, 1960

(3) K-3 Six crows battle a farmer for control of a wheat field. The farmer makes frightening scarecrows, which the crows try to scare off with terrifying kites. Finally, an owl helps the two parties talk over a solution. The fable is illustrated with clean, bright collage. The owl's claim that "words can do magic" is both the tale's moral and a storyteller's creed.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth

(2) K-3 Lionni's mixed-media compositions illustrate the story of a little inchworm who measures the neck of a flamingo, beak of a toucan, etc. Sensing danger from the nightingale, he quietly inches himself out of sight. The lovely colors, sharp definition of cutouts against white space, rhythm of the composition, and simplicity of the whole make for a handsome book.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc. | Horn Book Magazine Issue: February, 1961

(3) K-3 Mouse Theodore feels upstaged by his animal friends' talents. Claiming to understand a talking mushroom's language, he earns everyone's respect--and the right to be "venerated above all other animals"--until his lie is exposed in a most humiliating way. Lionni's signature collages, in mottled greens and marbleized browns, create an irresistibly lush forest setting.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(2) PS Little blue has many friends, but his best friend is little yellow. When they hug, together they make green. The imaginative use of color offers stimulation to the creative child and may be appealing to many youngsters just discovering the excitement of color. This fiftieth-anniversary edition includes a one-page excerpt from Lionni's autobiography describing the story's genesis.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc. | Horn Book Magazine Issue: February, 1960

(2) K-3 After a "wishingbird" grants Tico golden wings, the other birds turn against him for being different. Tico gives away his feathers, gaining regular black ones in their place. In this reissue the art has been completely restored, and the colors are once again crisp and vibrant. Tico's wings are printed with metallic gold ink so his feathers shimmer just as they should.

Reviewer: Terri Schmitz | Horn Book Magazine Issue: February, 1965

(2) K-3 Mouse Nicolas hates birds because they take all the best berries. An accident lands Nicolas in a birds' nest, where he's treated with great kindness, and he learns that "one bad bird doesn't make a flock." Lionni's splendid collages show thoughtful mice and lovely foliage. The story is a cheerful example of an ethical idea cast as a picture book.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc. | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 1987

(3) K-3 Pezzettino (Italian for "little piece"), an orange square, "was small and surely must be a little piece of somebody else, he thought." When he discovers that he is himself a collection of smaller pieces, he cries out happily "I am myself!" Lionni's collage and crayon illustrations graphically portray being small in a big world.

Reviewer: Terri Schmitz

(2) K-3 In this Caldecott Honor book, mouse Alexander befriends Willy, a wind-up toy mouse. Alexander determines to ask the magic lizard to change him into a wind-up mouse, but when Willy is consigned to the dust heap, Alexander changes his wish to help Willy. As always, Lionni's simple collages are the perfect accompaniment to his gentle story about the magic of friendship.

Reviewer: Terri Schmitz | Horn Book Magazine Issue: April, 1970

(2) K-3 In this companion to Swimmy, a minnow and a tadpole are inseparable friends, but the fish doesn't believe that the tadpole is becoming a frog. The large, colorful illustrations will delight: the swaying green water weeds, the companions in the deep, the fish's imaginings of land creatures with amusing fish-shaped bodies.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc. | Horn Book Magazine Issue: February, 1971

(3) K-3 In this deceptively simple fable, the letters of the alphabet live in a tree. They learn to form words, then a caterpillar suggests they make sentences--about something important. When they form PEACE ON EARTH AND GOODWILL TOWARD ALL MEN, the caterpillar decides to take them away--"to the President." It was a timely message in 1968 and still packs a punch.

Reviewer: Terri Schmitz

(4) K-3 A colony of mice decide to have their own Mardi Gras celebration. Hidden behind fierce masks, they begin to believe that they really are ferocious animals. Their community is filled with hate and suspicion until a mouse from outside convinces them to take off their masks and become themselves again. The art is gorgeous, but this fable's message is unclear.

Reviewer: Terri Schmitz | Horn Book Magazine Issue: April, 1974

(3) K-3 A collection of Lionni's best known, and much loved, animal stories includes Frederick, Swimmy, Fish Is Fish, and Alexander and the Wind-up Mouse along with a CD recording of the complete stories. The simple texts and dramatic graphic illustrations are essentially unchanged from the originals, so this new handsome edition is equally satisfying.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth

(3) PS "'Good morning,' said the scissors to the pencil. 'What shall we do today?' 'Let's make rabbits,' said the pencil." The two rabbits--one made of cut paper and the other a pencil drawing--come to life after eating a "real" carrot. The clearly told tale, expressive art, and clean design work well in this small board book edition, which retains the full text and all the artwork from the original.

Reviewer: Jennifer M. Brabander | Horn Book Magazine Issue: August, 1982