(2) K-3 Illustrated by Laura Hughes. "My pink pony and I ride the wide open spaces from sunrise to sunset," young narrator Kayla declares. Her "pink pony" is a small bike with training wheels, and the "wide open spaces" are her neighborhood's sidewalks. But she's outgrown the bike, so Wild Blue comes into her life--a much bigger and more spirited bicycle. Kayla saddles Wild Blue up, but..."Daddy! This bike's not tame enough to ride!" Despite her efforts, the new bike bucks her off time and time again. With her father (on "his red stallion"), Kayla heads to the park to practice, gradually learning to ride with confidence and joy. "Her legs are my legs. Her mane, my mane. Her breath, my breath." Slater does an excellent job inhabiting that space between imagination and real life that allows two things to be true: Wild Blue can be simultaneously a horse and a bicycle. Hughes's soft acrylic-ink illustrations capture that space as well: we sometimes see Kayla in a cowboy hat in the company of a large horse, and at other times in a bicycle helmet with her bike. Readers will appreciate Kayla's commitment to her imaginative life, along with Slater's twist on the familiar learning-to-ride-a-bike story: in the end Kayla denies that she's tamed her new bicycle, instead insisting, "She's still wild...but so am I."

Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2023

(4) PS A bunny family happily heads out on Easter morning, looking for eggs, until they meet up with a wolf and must retrace their steps and return home. There, they have Easter eggs for lunch. This is an overstuffed mash-up of counting book, lift-the-flap book, Easter book, and "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" reworking, but the watercolor and ink illustrations are appealing.

Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Laura Hughes. River Rose, a little girl giddy about a pending zoo trip, takes a magical trip there in the middle of the night. After reveling with the animals, she sings the polar bears to sleep with her mother's lullaby. The festive mood and premise are hindered by uneven rhymes and an unclear resolution; energetic ink, paint, and collage illustrations add appeal. A downloadable song by Clarkson is available.

Reviewer: Grace Enriquez

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Laura Hughes. Emma's wallpaper is decorated with jungle animals. One night they make so much noise she can't sleep; she climbs in and tries baths and cocoa before finally subduing them with a bedtime story. The illustrations are bright and cheery, but the plot is nothing special, and the border of reality and fantasy remains hazy since she wakes with the tiger in her bed.

Reviewer: Miriam Lang Budin

(4) PS Illustrated by Laura Hughes. This "Twelve Days of Christmas" takeoff details a kindergartner's first days in her diversely populated class. The cumulative verses (sans cardinal numbers: "On the first day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / riding the bus to my school!") don't scan exactly like the original's, but this gleefully illustrated intro to school-day activities should make a rollicking read-aloud.

Reviewer: Katrina Hedeen

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Laura Hughes. "Sam's family already had lots of menorahs. They didn't need another one." This is Sam's predicament as he makes a Hanukkah menorah with his Hebrew school class. Sam's distress about this problem seems excessive, but it's resolved in a touching, if expected, way. The delicately rendered illustrations feature a loving family. Instructions for playing dreidel are (somewhat incongruously) appended.

Reviewer: Rachel L. Smith