(3) K-3 Illustrated by Jeff Newman. Using their weekly allowances of five quarters each, James and Danny try for the lone silver racer inside the gumball machine at Mr. Wright's store. Newman's ink illustrations, with strong swaths of gumball-bright colors and loose black outlines, create a retro feel. The nostalgic book harkens back to a time adults will understand, but the late author's dialogue-driven text also speaks to today's kids.

Reviewer: Amy Seto Forrester

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Mary GrandPre. A man falls in love with a broom, but she's too beautiful to use. Lack of exercise causes her to droop, but even daily sweeping with the man isn't enough. The broom escapes; the man brings her home; in the end, she soars skyward and tends the stars. GrandPré's energetic illustrations are the perfect complement to Willard's fantastical tale.

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

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Jane Dyer. A pair of magpies are concerned observers of the goings-on in a house near their nest. When Cinderella needs a dress for the ball, the mamma magpie realizes that a stolen ring she has been hoarding has the power to call up Cinderella's fairy godmother. No need to take the story past that point, and Willard doesn't. This appealing bit of fluff is well served by Dyer's romantic watercolor illustrations, glowing with becoming colors.

Reviewer: Joanna Rudge Long | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2004

(4) PS Illustrated by Jenny Mattheson. In a rhyme patterned loosely after "The House That Jack Built," Willard tells the story of a mouse, a cat, and a runaway birthday cake. The strength of the whimsical story is the ending where readers are left to imagine the next series of catastrophes. Mattheson's oil paintings in purples and greens are too murky to convey the light tone of the text.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Chris Butler. Willard's thirteen diner-inspired poems are airy, pitch-perfect absurdities with dancing rhythms that recall, among other familiar favorites, Mother Goose, limericks, and the blues. In the best nonsense tradition, events are only tenuously governed by logic. The cut-paper illustrations are a beguiling meld of the concrete and the ethereal. Like the poetry, the art is in just the right style to set literal-minded imaginations free.

Reviewer: Joanna Rudge Long | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2001

(2) K-3 Illustrated by David Diaz. Holly Go Lolly loses her parents to the fearsome, voracious Ooboo, but, skilled at making shadows, she cleverly brings about the Ooboo's downfall. Willard has written an original fairy tale with a resourceful and determined heroine, telling her story in lively prose with the cadences of traditional fairy tales. Diaz fills the pages with enchanted colors and small, purply shadow silhouettes.

Reviewer: Nancy Bond | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 1999

(4) 1-3 Illustrated by David Christiana. Willard's poem about a yellow ball lost and found in the shadows of an imaginary world is an intriguing mix of fantasy and nonsense. Christiana's watercolors are inventive and magical, and while they match the tone of the poem, taken together the text and art are somewhat overwhelming. Listeners will be better off hearing the poem without the illustrations and viewing the art without the text.

Reviewer: Jennifer Polshek

(4) YA Despite the inclusion of some excellent (adult) poetry, this anthology has only the most tenuous of arrangements to make it cohere. As Willard acknowledges in an introduction, the book consists of poems that give her "a special kind of pleasure." The poems are mostly short but sophisticated; that and the arbitrary nature of the selection will limit the readership.

Reviewer: Susan P. Bloom