(3) PS Illustrated by Joel Stewart. For this clever story, Willis invents a genial ambulance crew who takes care of nursery rhyme accidents. "Has Jack Be Nimble burned his bum? / Has Little Jack Horner choked on a plum?" The illustrations are as sprightly as the rhyme; the ambulance bounces down the road, while ambulance-chasing characters from "Hey Diddle Diddle," such as the dish and the spoon, show up at each emergency.

Reviewer: Martha Sibert

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Joel Stewart. "Have you ever wanted some quiet, a little time to read a book, / settled down beneath a tree... / ...to have it ruined by a Snook?" Young readers will relish the narrator's serial recountings of his run-ins with five imaginary creatures. The art looks washed out, but it conveys the story's tone: the creatures have all the menace of Muppets.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Joel Stewart. After stuffed bear Red Ted is accidentally left on a train, he befriends a stuffed crocodile with whom he searches for his owner. The art, presented in comic-strip-style panels, is worthy of this mirthfully suspenseful tale. The story is largely told with dialogue balloons courtesy of cast members who provide the only notes of color in the atmospheric sepia-toned illustrations.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(2) 4-6 Translated by Naomi Lewis. Illustrated by Joel Stewart. In her often provocative introductions to these thirteen stories, longtime Andersen scholar Lewis comments on their histories, allegorical meanings, and links to Andersen's life. The quiet swatches of spot art and a generous format signify serious purpose, while the stylized figures in the illustrations invite readers to dream their own dreams of Andersen's strange, allusive world.

Reviewer: Joanna Rudge Long | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2005

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Joel Stewart. Stewart's interpretation of the nonsense poem from Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There has a spare elegance even as it adeptly embodies the absurdity of goings-on in the verse. The entire poem appears on the first page; opposite, a Victorian man reads to his son (the son later appears as the slayer of the Jabberwock). The "tulgey wood" and even the Jabberwock's death by "vorpal blade" are less threatening than simply bizarre.

Reviewer: Carolyn Shute

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Joel Stewart. This varied collection of poems about the sea and the creatures in it is both entertaining and thoughtful. Spike Milligan and Sam McBratney offer humorous verses about sardines and barnacles, respectively; James Reeves compares the sea to a hungry dog. Other poets include Mary Ann Hoberman, Walter de la Mare, and Jack Prelutsky. The playful mixed-media illustrations are well suited to this welcome collection.

Reviewer: Hilary Breed Van Dusen

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Joel Stewart. Looking like a Salvador Dali creation, a walking nose--he has legs jutting from his nostrils--travels around trying to find a place where he can "fit in and stick out." While the theme isn't new, this pleasingly surreal quest for belonging does have a droll twist, in that, wherever the nose goes, he always appears in the mixed-media illustrations to be right where he belongs, in the middle of a face.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann