(2) PS Illustrated by Chris Sheban. Siblings Emma, Aidan, and Milo adore their grandfather, an avid bird-watcher. Their grandmother had loved not birds but horses, so much so that she wanted to be a horse in her next life. "What will you be?" Emma asks Grandfather. "I'll let you know when the time comes," he replies. Milo, the youngest, doesn't talk much but has a special connection with Grandfather--he sees what Grandfather sees, hears what he hears, and learns about the birds he most loves, especially the "high-soaring bald eagle." When the children come home from school one day, Grandfather, whose health had been failing, is not there. Milo wonders, "But where is Grandfather?" He runs outside, just as a bald eagle soars above. "Grandfather flies!" exclaims the child. Sheban's watercolor, pastel, and graphite illustrations bring a fuzzily textured look to the pages, an appropriately soft treatment for a remembrance of a loved one. Text and illustrations interplay beautifully, as in the quiet image of a sad Milo being hugged when he discovers that Grandfather has gone. A sensitive portrayal of family, love, life, and death presented in a child-friendly manner.

Reviewer: Dean Schneider | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2021

(3) PS Illustrated by Chris Sheban. Young Brody, "in his strange new room on his big new bed," can't sleep. He sneaks outside and nestles in a tree like a squirrel, cuddles up to a cloud, etc., but he still can't sleep. Brody ultimately realizes that there's no place like home--even a new one. This reassuring book, featuring dusk-swept art, is a first-class ticket to dreamland.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Chris Sheban. "If you were a little girl who listened to stories / over and over," the narrator asserts, "then maybe you would grow up to be... / someone like me. / A writer." MacLachlan weaves a thoughtful prose poem of her childhood memories, matched in tone and beauty by Sheban's delicately executed illustrations, but reiterated a bit redundantly in later descriptions of what the author made from those memories.

Reviewer: Rebecca Fox

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Chris Sheban. Yolen's minimal rhyming verse muses on the imaginative potential of cardboard boxes: "You can climb inside and there read a book. It can be a library, / palace, / or nook." Sheban's soft and dreamy illustrations, created with different paints and colored pencils on brown cardboard packages, bring to life the poetic text.

Reviewer: Jeannie Coutant

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Chris Sheban. An old, hungry dog arrives at a farm looking for work. The farmer declares he has no need for a dog. "We'll see about that," the dog replies. The persistent canine demonstrates his cow-herding, horse-wrangling, and chicken-tending talents for the reluctant farmer until he lands the job of "good dog." Soft, grainy watercolor illustrations add humor to the satisfying tale.

Reviewer: Sheila M. Geraty

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Chris Sheban. After a trip to the Museum of Natural History, a girl starts to see dinosaurs everywhere she looks, though her parents tell her she's just imagining things. Wahl's text, which often struggles to maintain its meter, is almost beside the point; the real draw is the quietly humorous pastel illustrations of lifelike dinosaurs in everyday settings. Brief information about the ten featured dinosaurs is appended.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc.

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Chris Sheban. Here's a love story--between a girl and a library book that, while inanimate, responds emotionally as it’s overlooked, adored, misplaced, and so on over time ("The book grew lonelier and lonelier"). Readers won't be surprised by the outcome, but some may be interested in the inner workings of a library, with its volunteers, book sales, and mythical basement.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Chris Sheban. Young cowboy-wannabe Cole daydreams about roping strays and hunting down rustlers. He's beyond excited for his first camping experience--that is, until it gets dark. Is that sound a rattlesnake? Dreamy, expansive illustrations distinguish between Cole's wild imagination and his reality--a suburban backyard--in this well-done ode to self-fulfillment.

Reviewer: Patricia Riley

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Chris Sheban. A fisherwoman tries to catch the moon and bully it into keeping the high tide from washing her shack away. The logic behind this wordy, quirky, surrealistic tale is vague and will likely leave readers with questions. The colored-pencil and watercolor illustrations glow with the phosphorescence of moonlight against the dark blue of the night sky.

Reviewer: Martha Sibert

(3) 1-3 Illustrated by Chris Sheban. With the family on the brink of starvation, Papa mouse leaves to find food. When he doesn't return, it's up to young Pipsqueak to face her deepest fears and go forage. This tale ends happily at Christmastime, but there are some dark details along the way. Shadowy, expressive pictures illustrate the mouse family's plight.

Reviewer: Aimee Chevrette Bear

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Chris Sheban. Ingeniously composed (if slightly cutesy) crayon-textured illustrations depict an abortive hen-house raid. The fox's tense anticipation as he regards the hen house, the chickens' addle-brained panic, and the farmer's bumbling rescue are vividly drawn. Though the verse narration maintains a sense of late-night dreaminess, the final payoff is a letdown, sidestepping potentially delicious chaos and avoiding true resolution.

Reviewer: Miriam Lang Budin

(3) 4-6 Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. Illustrated by Chris Sheban. Zorba, a benevolent but powerful black cat, promises a dying seagull that he will care for her egg and teach the chick inside to fly. Together with the other Hamburg port cats, Zorba cares for the chick but is perplexed how to fulfill the last part of his mission. One reader's heartwarming is another reader's sappy, but the relationship between bird and cats is genuinely touching. The book is illustrated with black-and-white art.

Reviewer: Susan Dove Lempke

(4) 1-3 Illustrated by Chris Sheban. Susannah DeClare, a frontier woman of legendary height and fame, journeys across the plains making shoes and telling of her adventures. Slow in the beginning, Lewis's carefully crafted language builds to a satisfying, if subtle, tale. The soft, atmospheric illustrations are too infrequent to fully capture the nuances of the text.

Reviewer: CHristine Sarrazin