(3) PS Illustrated by Allison Black. Jack the pirate gets dressed in this rhyming tale featuring colorful Photoshop illustrations. On each spread Jack dons another item of clothing ("What else? Egads, me toes be cold! / Thick socks o' pink are warm, I'm told") until he's fully dressed and ready to "join me motley crew!" It's a clever twist on two tried-and-true topics, making it a must-have for preschool collections.

Reviewer: Kari Allen

(3) PS Illustrated by Michael Emberley. From first cry to first birthday, this picture book follows three families navigating their babies' first years. Simple rhyming declarations--"First roll, then creep. / First crawl, then sleep"--list milestones large and small; Emberley's digitally-colored pencil illustrations depict the three ethnically diverse families in affectionate vignettes. Straightforward and readable, this celebration of babyhood will appeal to fans of Susan Meyers and Marla Frazee's Everywhere Babies.

Reviewer: Jessica Tackett MacDonald

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Kurt Cyrus. This rhymed counting book explores numbers found in nature, from one (a mouth, nose, moon) to ten (toes and fingers), ending with a set too big to count (stars). Examples range from the familiar (birds, octopuses) to the hard to count (colors in a rainbow) to the less well known (stickleback fish). The digitally created illustrations evoke beauty and peace.

Reviewer: Grace Worcester Greene

(3) K-3 Illustrated by George Bates. After trick-or-treating, a wide-eyed boy walks home through the spooky woods. The clouds, leaves, and tree branches form menacing shapes, shown in Bates's increasingly creepy digitally colored pen-and-ink illustrations. Then "a whisper rustles in his ear... / Cracklety-clack, bones in a sack. / They could be yours--if you look back." It's a refrain that might well scare some kids at storytime.

Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Steve Haskamp & Steve Haskamp. Monkey sets out to deliver pizza to a party. Doubling the number of wheels each time, he upgrades his vehicles from a unicycle to a bicycle to a car, ending up with a sixty-four wheel train. Though it occasionally falters, the simple rhyming text is enhanced by the lively illustrations, which extend the story with humorous details. Even the pre-math set will cheer the arrival of the still-hot pizza at the party.

Reviewer: Rebecca Reed Whidden

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Genna Panzarella. In this creation myth, a brother and sister from heaven compete to make the sky and the earth. Faam Koh's sky is too small to cover the earthly tapestry his sister has made. With her embroidery skills (for which the Mien are known), the sister gathers and pleats the earth, creating mountains and valleys, and making her tapestry fit the sky. The hard-to-read typeface is unfortunate. The illustrations become repetitive but are striking overall.

Reviewer:

(3) PS Illustrated by Anne Mortimer. A striped gray kitten "peeks at January, / toys with February, / stalks March" and continues to pursue feline activities through the rest of the year. On each double-page spread, the white letters of the text, set against a brightly colored background, face a picture of the tabby exploring its natural and domestic surroundings. Seasonal flowers are prominent in most of the illustrations.

Reviewer: Anne St. John