(3) K-3 Illustrated by Delphine Durand. "After the twenty-six letters had been invented," Al Pha takes up the challenge of putting them in order. His logic is often a stretch (E next to F because they look alike, P because "just then, nature called"), but it may still help readers make sense of the alphabet's seemingly arbitrary order. Acrylic illustrations of characters shaped like thumbs enhance the humor.

Reviewer: Shoshana Flax

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Delphine Durand. Big Rabbit's bad mood keeps following him around, no matter what he does to get rid of it. The mood quickly goes away, however, when family and friends arrive to celebrate Big Rabbit's birthday, which he has apparently forgotten. This memory lapse isn't especially convincing, but it's amusing to see the antics of the obnoxious bad mood, comically portrayed as a hairy gray creature.

Reviewer: Martha Sibert

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Delphine Durand. Using a strategically placed egg and two feathers, Henrietta's big sisters convince her that she is a chicken, not a girl. Unable to face her human family, Henrietta escapes to the neighbor's farm where she finds comfort in the hen house--and leaves her sisters to deal with the parental fall-out. Clean-lined illustrations capture the silly and satisfying twist of a quirky sibling prank that backfires.

Reviewer: Carrie Harasimowicz Sullivan

(3) PS Illustrated by Delphine Durand. When Little Pig cries "Eat!" (his first word), look out. His father and sister lament his messiness, but his mother just scrubs his clothes, chair, and body before bed, where he finally utters his long-awaited second word: "Neat!" The cheerful, loosely rhyming text and quirky images of the pig family are fitting counterpoint to the chaos Little Pig creates.

Reviewer: Hilary Breed Van Dusen

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Delphine Durand. When a head louse nests in Ms. Calypso's cascading curls, soon she and her entire class are scratching away. Unfortunately, Ms. Calypso (who lives alone) is the only one who can't shampoo the lice properly from her hair until amorous Principal Trout helps her do so. The quirky characters in Durand's sophisticatedly colored cartoon illustrations are a good match for Moss's humorous text.

Reviewer: Mark Adam

(4) 1-3 Illustrated by Delphine Durand. Second-grader Gregory Sampson awakens one morning to find he has become a beetle, and no one but his best friend notices the transformation. Much more chipper and mild than Kafka's Metamorphosis, the story and its offbeat stylized illustrations offer an amusing, if rather pat, look at what it might be like to be a bug for a day.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann