(3) PS Illustrated by Alison Friend. "Beaver was good at making lots of things," but he struggles to make friends. Raccoon has the same problem, and together they build a snowman to keep them company. Through teamwork, discovery, sadness, and relief, the animals realize they can be friends. The dialogue-heavy text is simple and clear. Cozy digital illustrations show the creatures on their journey toward friendship.

Reviewer: Miriam Steinberg-Egeth

(3) PS Illustrated by Zoe Waring. The animal gang from Truck, Truck, Goose! returns for more sparsely worded entertainment. This time, the friends go fishing but have trouble attracting the lake's big, gilled resident ("No fish"). However, after Goose orders pizza, darned if the fish isn't suddenly sociable ("Here you go, Fish!"). The bright, cheerful-looking digital art features a cast with the facial candor and pudgy proportions of toddlers.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Dave Mottram. Ebullient and verbose, Wordy Birdy always talks a lot: "Hello, sunrise. Hello, pink sky. / Hello, orange sky. Hello, yellow sky." But she is a terrible listener, even when her forest friends plead with her to avoid a menacing bear with spiky teeth. The expressive characters' word-balloon dialogue and the colorful cartoonlike illustrations help convey the engaging story's theme of friends sticking together.

Reviewer: Sheila M. Geraty

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Guy Francis. A bear awakes to a knock at his door. "'Who's there?' 'Justin.' 'Justin who?' / 'Justin the neighborhood and thought I'd stop by!'" says a fox--the first of many uninvited guests who "KNOCK KNOCK" their way in. Finally, both bear and reader realize that everyone has arrived for a pre-hibernation party. The art is charmlessly cartoonish, but the jokes deliciously corny.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Dan Taylor. A bear with a suitcase repeatedly shows up at a boy's house until the youngster sternly sends him away because "bears do not belong in houses." Sure enough, the solitary boy soon misses his would-be friend and launches a neighborhood search for him. Appealing vignettes move the entertaining story along, and the illustrations show the bear introducing some agreeable disorder into the boy's orderly home.

Reviewer: Martha Sibert

(3) PS Illustrated by Troy Cummings. A boy orders a pet kitten but gets a lion instead, along with a fourteen-step guide that serves as the text for this story. The guide's black-and-white diagrams are incorporated in the cartoon-style illustrations, and the contrast between the boy's experiences and the straight-faced diagrams is humorously absurd. The boy is persistent and caring, and the lion is rambunctious and loving.

Reviewer: Miriam Steinberg-Egeth

(3) PS Illustrated by Zoe Waring. Goose heads out for a picnic pulling a ridiculously overloaded wagon. A piano falls out of the wagon and causes a truck traffic jam. Goose and the animal truck drivers move the piano together and are rewarded with an ice cream truck's arrival. With a simple text consisting of just truck and goose, the story is told mainly through the detailed illustrations.

Reviewer: Miriam Steinberg-Egeth

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Angie Rozelaar. Moose just can't help himself: at Rabbit's birthday party, he gobbles up the entire cake and offends his best friends Rabbit and Porcupine. Though he claims innocence at first, Moose soon confesses and makes things right by baking a fancy new cake. The humorous text highlights each animal's personality, while the spontaneous-looking illustrations effectively use simple shapes to portray the friends.

Reviewer: Martha Sibert

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton. Brown-skinned Mary is an ultra-fashionable girl who commands the spotlight wherever she goes because of her glamorous accessories. She makes-over her fellow Mother Goose Elementary students, but will recess wreck the outfits? The revamped nursery-rhyme characters are diversely portrayed in Brantley-Newton's collaged digital illustrations for this zippy rhyming story with a lesson for young fashionistas: "Sometimes less is more!"

Reviewer: Lauren Causey

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Goro Fujita. This follow-up to Your Alien inverts the original story with the boy joining his alien for a playdate in space. When the boy gets homesick, the alien brings him home. Again relying on atypical second-person narration gives the brief but emotional story--about friendship, love, and belonging--an appropriately otherworldly quality. The richly colored illustrations are full of personality and adventure.

Reviewer: Miriam Steinberg-Egeth

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Lynn Munsinger. When upbeat Ginny Louise joins class, resident troublemakers Cap'n Catastrophe, Destructo Dude, and Make-My-Day May combat her maddening cheerfulness the best they can, but they're no match for Ginny Louise. Munsinger's illustrations--colorful spreads interspersed with smaller vignettes and well-used white space--make the most of the comedic misunderstandings and standoff-turned-party antics; Sauer avoids a cloying message about "good kids" vs. "bad."

Reviewer: Rebecca Kirshenbaum

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Goro Fujita. An alien comes to live with a little boy but gets homesick, so the boy helps him return to his family. The unusual second-person narration gives an appropriately otherworldly quality to the warm story about homesickness and the comfort of family. The illustrations, many on nighttime backgrounds with striking rendering of light, adeptly capture the alien's wistfulness and the boy's compassion.

Reviewer: Miriam Steinberg-Egeth

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Liz Starin. "I'm a big dragon." A costumed boy confident in his dragon-like menace keeps getting cut down ("No, you're not") by two visiting dragons. They reassure him that "there are lots of things you can do," only to start bawling upon realizing their own limitations. This entertaining spirit-booster, accompanied by tastefully splashy illustrations, delineates how differences are compensatory in a friendship.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Michael Slack. Besties Nugget (minnow) and Fang (shark) get along swimmingly, until Nugget's school lessons reveal that big, bad sharks eat minnows. Aquatic-hued digital illustrations depict Fang's touching, hilarious attempts (disguising himself as a mermaid, tattooing Nugget's name, serenading him, etc.) to get his pal back. When his toothy mouth saves the day, Fang gains the minnows' trust--and ten more best friends.

Reviewer: Carrie Harasimowicz Sullivan

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Dan Santat. In this amusing sequel to Chicken Dance, Elvis Poultry is rattled because the Chicken Dancers, his backup duo, keep fainting from stage fright. The barnyard puns are fearless ("Everyone got in the moo-d"), and the illustrations are as slick as a Vegas act, for which the Chicken Dancers are expertly dressed.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(2) PS Illustrated by Bob Shea. Searching for a pet, Cave Boy brings home a woolly mammoth (too big), then a saber-toothed tiger (Papa has allergies), then a dodo bird (not housebroken). But the animals all help stave off a stampede, changing the minds of Mama, Papa, and Gran Cave. Shea's stylized illustrations, with their thick lines, abstracted human figures, and flat perspectives, resemble Chris Raschka's.

Reviewer: Kathleen T. Horning | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2012

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Victoria Hutto. Sam visits cousin Mia in Illinois and Ethan visits cousin Addison in Oklahoma where both are showered with state-specific gifts, "Twelve Days of Christmas"–style. Letters home to Mom and Dad relate the cultural activities each state has to offer; additional state facts are appended. Children may enjoy trying to count the gifts in the cheesy illustrations. Review covers these titles: The Twelve Days of Christmas in Illinois and The Twelve Days of Christmas in Oklahoma.

Reviewer: Katrina Hedeen

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Dan Krall. Zoo chipmunks Cutesy, Blinky, and Bob go unnoticed by crowds who ogle sleeping sloths, grass-chewing zebras, and other boring inhabitants. They don costumes, play rock music, and attempt dangerous feats--but still nothing. When they resort to their zoo neighbors' behaviors, the crowds (and paparazzi) swarm--to the trio's surprising dislike. The silly chubby-cheeked critters are textually and visually full of character.

Reviewer: Carrie Harasimowicz Sullivan

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Joe Berger. Seduced by Camp Princess's hard sell, tomboy princess Viola gives civilized behavior her best shot but nevertheless reliably disappoints her teacher--until Viola saves her from a dragon via karate chops and skateboard tricks. Readers will feel for Viola, whose mixed emotions about fitting in are apparent on her face in Berger's animated, jazzy pictures--when she's not moat-diving, that is.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Jeff Mack. Mr. Duck enjoys his daily routine--and his peace and quiet--until uninvited farm animals show up and start frolicking in his pond. When Mr. Duck first protests then regains his privacy, the solitude gets to him, and he devises a win-win solution. Mack's illustrations (especially in Mr. Duck's expressions, gestures, and homemade signs and charts) effectively convey his utter exasperation--and, eventually, his total contentment.

Reviewer: Sethany Rancier Alongi