(3) PS Illustrated by Melissa Castrillon. "Yellow kayak. Blue sky. Paddle swiftly. Wave good-bye." Clipped, hushed rhymes follow a child and his friend, who resembles a spotted giraffe, as they set off in a rowboat. Together they brave a storm, sleep above active sea life, and square off with whales before returning home. It's a surreal, word-perfect adventure with swirling art in tweaked primary colors.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Melissa Castrillon. An earnest young girl lists a string of "If...then" scenarios: imagining fancifully what she would do if she had a bicycle, a garden, a brother, etc., giving each a conceptual name ("If I had a little bicycle, I would name it Wings") and envisioning it broadening her horizons. The sinuous digitally colored pencil illustrations work in harmony with the sometimes saccharine, loosely metered poems.

Reviewer: Frank Arkage

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Adam McCauley. During a car trip to Grandma's house, a young boy repeatedly asks, "Are we there yet?" His patient mom replies, "No." The text is primarily that exchange repeated on every spread; the real story takes place in the increasingly fantastical mixed-media illustrations, which begin on the highway but become more surreal and outrageous as the (imagined?) journey continues.

Reviewer: Rebecca Reed Whidden

(3) PS Illustrated by Renata Liwska. A feather drifts through a child's window and he wonders about the feather's origin, leading to a series of questions about the nature of things ("Does a chair remember it once was... / a tree?"). The poetic text has a nice rhythm, and while the after/before concepts are rather abstract, Liwska's feather-soft, detailed illustrations of the child (and her signature animals) provide thoughtful illumination.

Reviewer: Cynthia K. Ritter

(4) K-3 Shakespeare's famous tale is waggishly retold with a feline Romeo and a canine Juliet whose friends fight like cats and dogs and scorn the love of the heroes. This parody, however, ends happily with a surprise twist. The gouache illustrations are adequate, but not memorable, and the story is told in alternate sections of witty dialogue and clunky iambic pentameter.

Reviewer: Megan Lynn Isaac

(4) K-3 A circus announcer spends this book asking questions about a clown family's vacation ("Do they pay lots of rent / Or sleep in a tent?"). The erratically rhyming text, with only casual meter, soon grows tiresome, but the gouache and photomontage illustrations are engaging and filled with sight gags, such as an image of the clown car, waylaid by an overturned glue truck, beside the question, "Are they stuck in traffic?"

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(3) K-3 Left alone to guard the house, the narrator, a dog with an attitude, finds an advertisement for free-range chickens. "Starving for adventure, hungry for chicken," he sets off to procure his free fowls. The text, full of puns and wordplay ("It was pure poultry in motion"), is fun to read aloud, while the illustrations showing a debonair dog with a beret add their own bits of humor.

Reviewer: Patricia Riley

(3) K-3 Pigasso the painterly pig and Mootisse the artistic bull live across the street from each other. When a stylistic rivalry erupts, their friendship almost dissolves, until each realizes the value of their companionship. Each character and his surroundings are adroitly rendered in the style of the respective real-life artist, and masterworks are cleverly riffed in the striking gouache illustrations. A brief biography of each artist is included.

Reviewer: Emma Loy-Santelli