(3) K-3 Illustrated by Deborah Zemke. “The writer” is composing what seems to be a traditional “Three Little Pigs” retelling...but the animals from the story keep appearing in her office and demanding changes to the plot, characters, and setting. Cartoony art, often using graphic-novel conventions, is just the right match for the silly text of this amusing metafictive picture book with a side of story-element review.

Reviewer: Shoshana Flax

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Michelle Laurentia Agatha. Gottesfeld (Twenty-One Steps, rev. 3/21) tells the story of real-life mensch Al Rosen, a "Jewish man who loved Christmas." Rosen became locally famous in Milwaukee, beginning in 1969 and for several decades, by ­covering celebrants' Christmastime work shifts. Per the straightforward text, Al ran a newsstand, pumped gas, sorted mail, shined shoes, and much more. Cheerful digital illustrations show him gamely going about the tasks; a colorful bartending scene, complete with rainbow-hued spillage, reads, "Some jobs he did better than others." Near the end of his life, and at the end of the book, everyone whom Al had helped--"all the folks easy to dismiss in a world that mistakes wealth for worth"--gratifyingly comes together to celebrate Hanukkah with his family.

Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2021

(2) K-3 Illustrated by April Chu. We open on a carnival barker ushering turn-of-the-twentieth-century crowds into a room whose walls are lined with metal and glass boxes. A farmer pulls a tiny baby out of a hatbox and asks for help saving his newborn child. In a remarkable true story, Moss introduces Dr. Martin Couney, a doctor with a flair for showmanship who used expositions and eventually the Coney Island Boardwalk to build public trust for a new idea that could save "doomed to die" premature babies: "warming boxes," or incubators. Moss's text depicts a deeply empathetic man who uses his flair for the dramatic to give babies from all kinds of backgrounds a fighting chance, and who eventually uses the skills he learned to care for his own premature infant. Chu's illustrations, sketched in muted browns and greens with an occasional carnival pop of color, have an old-timey charm full of detailed period dress and very appealing itty-bitty babies. (Unfortunately, the endpapers show sideshow performers without any context, treating them as something to gawk at in the same way these sideshow circuses did.) An author's note offers additional information about Dr. Couney and a list of suggested readings.

Reviewer: Laura Koenig | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2021

(2) PS This almost-wordless story of friendship and separation shows a small alien making its way to Earth in a spaceship that looks (and opens) like a pill capsule. The use of color conveys important meaning within the rounded, bubbly art. After landing on Earth, the alien encounters a friendly rabbit in a candy-colored landscape and then makes its way into town, where it is ignored by a throng of tall, oblivious adults, rendered in drab grays and browns. Eventually, the dejected alien meets a similarly sized child, who offers crayons and paper; through the act of making art, the two become fast friends. The alien turns out to be delightfully helpful, as it can retrieve lost paper airplanes and dropped ice cream with its handheld device. The device unfortunately then calls the alien back to its home planet, and the new friendship is tested by untold miles. At home, the other aliens, anxious to hear about the traveler's adventures, are tellingly rendered in the same drab lack of color as the adults on Earth. In a wistful, open-ended conclusion, the small alien finds the perfect way to send a message back to its new very-long-distance friend: the one-word grand gesture of a celestial "Hello."

Reviewer: Julie Roach | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2020