(4) K-3 Illustrated by Jeffrey Stewart Timmins. Two veteran children's poets create a series of sardonic poems imagining the final moments for a variety of prehistoric creatures, arranged chronologically from the Paleozoic to the Cenozoic eras. The book's humor doesn't always land, and the cartoony digital illustrations (which include a wild-eyed, bearded paleontologist) are more frenzied than funny. Brief facts below each verse add a useful scientific aspect to the volume.

Reviewer: Katrina Hedeen

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Jeffrey Stewart Timmins. From murder and suicide to accidental deaths and those by natural causes, refusal to shy away from its grisly concept is this book's charm. Most poems will elicit a chuckle, or at least a gasp; Timmins's eerie, atmospheric illustrations contain additional quips, but around the fourth time a creature is hit by the same truck, the joke loses some intensity.

Reviewer: Shara Hardeson

(4) 4-6 Illustrated by Jeffrey Stewart Timmins. The Cheeseman family meets a cast of quirky characters and villains as they try to keep their time machine, the LVR-ZX, out of the wrong hands and travel back in time to save their mother, who's been poisoned. Fans of the incoherent adventure series will enjoy this installment filled with the usual brazen advice of Lemony Snicket–esque narrator, Dr. Cuthbert Soup.

Reviewer: Aimee Chevrette Bear

(4) 4-6 Illustrated by Jeffrey Stewart Timmins. In this sequel to A Whole Nother Story, the pompous and ever-unhelpful Dr. Soup narrates the Cheeseman siblings' travails as they hurtle across space and time to prevent a centuries-old curse and save their mother. Meanwhile, their circus friends gleefully return to piracy and old foes resurface. The story gallops from one zany, ill-fated event to the next, thinly tethered to coherence.

Reviewer: Bethany Templeton Klem

(4) 4-6 Illustrated by Jeffrey Stewart Timmins. This volume follows an inventor, his three children, and their psychic hairless dog as they run away from bad guys trying to steal Dad's latest invention, a time machine. An unapologetically intrusive narrator (à la Lemony Snicket) relates events. Though the author's pontificating is rarely as funny or insightful, Snicket fans craving something similar might enjoy this adventure.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann