(4) K-3 Illustrated by Maryann Kovalski. In this story set in Manhattan's Lower East Side in the 1930s, a young girl from Italy plants morning glories to help cheer up her homesick mother. Soon the vibrant flowers spread all over the city and revive the poor immigrant neighborhood. Energetic illustrations perk up the humdrum text.

Reviewer: Kristin Cashore

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Maryann Kovalski. Cheerful colored-pencil and acrylic illustrations chock-full of amusing detail and wonderful facial expressions draw readers into a well-told tale about a Jewish immigrant family's first Thanksgiving in early-twentieth-century New York City. This is for a younger audience than Barbara Cohen's classic, Molly's Pilgrim. An author's note provides some prefatory information. Glos.

Reviewer: Amy Lois Cohn

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Maryann Kovalski. Impressionistic gouache paintings rendered in warm tones give an appropriately historic feel to this account of seven chairs, all made by the same man at different stages in his life. The spare, periodically confusing text, which traces the separate journeys the chairs travel from their maker's hands through the centuries, shifts back and forth in time without always giving adequate clues.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann