A Father Like That by Charlotte Zolotow / Illustrated by LeUyen Pham

It's not always easy to find picture books that feature a missing parent...especially if that parent is missing voluntarily. This new picture book features a boy describing what his father would be like if he were around.

This kind of father would share jokes from the office, would bring home a new book if the boy was sick, would help with the dishes, and would play checkers. The litany continues and the variety and detail of the activities is one of the most endearing qualities of the book.

The illustrations are very good and complement the story nicely. The book ends with the mother who is "sewing very fast" saying "when you grow up, you can be a father like that yourself!"

Fathers everywhere should read this book to see what good fathers look like to good kids. A charming book without the saccharine feel that some mother/father books can give.

A Bear and His Boy by Sean Bryan

Here's another book about not getting caught up in lists and tasks to do on a day to day basis. Can ya tell that I myself am a slave to my lists?

One day a bear wakes up to find a boy on his back. I LOVE the fact that the bear is the one surprised by this, not the boy. The boy simply remarks nonchalantly "My name is Zach."

If you yourself woke up one day with a bear or a fairy or a Smurf or something equally surprising on your back, what would you do? The bear already has a full day planned and decided to just take the boy along.

The bear's day planner is hilariously like my own...I mean really...how does anyone think they will be able to accomplish eating flapjacks, collecting an award, going to a karate lesson, bird-watching, working out, returning a book to the library, cleaning house, and remembering a friends birthday all in one day? Me apparently. My days are turning into one long to-do list, much to the dismay of my husband. I need some little someone to appear on my back to remind me to smell the lilacs. Because that's just what the boy does at the end of the story.

Did I mention the restful simplicity of the pictures or the hilarious rhyme scheme? Or the great twist at the end? Here is one charmer of a picture book sure to entertain even the most discriminating reader. Till next time! - Suzanne

How to be a Baby by Me, the Big Sister by Sally Lloyd-Jones and Sue Heap

I have a bunch of nieces and nephews and it always cracks me up when they get siblings. The older kids who until very recently (like the day the baby is born) have always been the baby in my eyes are all of a sudden like these incredibly smart giants who know everything. They know how to walk and talk and can eat their own food and are counting and (this is my favorite part) they talk baby talk to their new siblings. I just love watching a 1.5 year old cooing to a baby. Hilarious.

So this book just speaks to me. It's all about a 6 year old who is teaching her baby sibling (never really specifies a boy or girl) how to be a baby. In reality, she's really going on and on about how great she is and how it's really boring to be a baby, but I just see so many traits of my nieces and nephews! My niece Abigail is vain about her hair (just like I was when I was in Kindergarten) and so is the Big Sister in this book. The baby in the book gets dressed up in all kinds of outrageous outfits reminding me of my nephew Matthew when he was a baby (I just know I put some doll clothes on him at one time or another). And don't even get me started on the nick-names. Till next time! -Suzanne

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Book? by Lauren Child

Lauren Child of Charlie and Lola fame has written a hilarious book about their friend Herb who falls into a book of fairy tales and has to fess up to crimes that he committed against the book...crimes like cutting out pages and putting them back upside down, drawing mustaches on some of the characters (like the queen in Cinderella) and sqishing peas between the pages.

Herb, looking for help from the characters finds only a crabby Goldilocks (she is the star, afterall and he is stealing her limelight), a Cinderella who can't go to the ball for lack of a prince (Herb cut out him a while back to use as a picture on a card for his mother) and a confused stepmother who is now in the book upside down.

The familiar story book characters paired with the frantic Herb make this book a pleasure to read to yourself or to shar with someone you love! The illustrations are very fun and children familiar with the Charlie and Lola characters may have to read it with a British Accent...very lovely!

The Baby BeeBee Bird by Diane Redfield Massie

Looking for a book to help get a silly little one to sleep? Try this book (or better yet, try the method the animals in the zoo use)! This book illustrated by Steven Kellogg is about an active little bird who wants to sing all night. By doing this, the silly little bird keeps all the other animals awake! The other animals get back at the bird by keeping it awake during the day. In the end, the other animals in the zoo are successful at changing the sleeping habits of the silly BeeBee bird.

I really like the illustrations in this book, and the text is fun and zippy, but I have a hard time with the premise of the story...why should the little nocturnal bird change his natural traits to conform to the group? Of course, living in a community residence, like the zoo, would make such changes beneficial for the good of the group, but why couldn't the author use this book to teach about nocturnal animals and perhaps have the zookeeper reorganize the zoo to put all the noctunal animals together? I suppose, the general idea was to show that babies or small children do need to sleep at night, but animals are not like us humans and I think personally (my own personal opinion!) that the nocturnal-ness of this bird should have been discussed. Till next time! -Suzanne

Every Friday by Dan Yaccarino

What a sweet book to share with a dad! In this father / son tale a boy and his dad share with the reader their weekly tradition of having breakfast together every Friday. There is even an author's note at the beginning explaining that the author has taken his son to breakfast every Friday since his son was three years old!

When I was in kindergarten, I remember a similar tradition I had with my mom...we would go out to lunch every Wednesday and I got to pick the place. For some reason, I really loved a good cheeseburger (I still do today!) so we would inveritable go to a fast food joint and have fries and a burger. I don't know if I'd choose the same places today (I'm a little more health conscience now that I'm not 5) but I still remember that tradition we had. The illustrations in this book are reminicient of the 50's including such details as a milkman, an egg cup, and cars with 50's type details. A very cute book for sharing with someone you love!

17 Things I'm not Allowed to do Anymore

The protagonist of this simple but hilarious book presents 17 examples of things she's not allowed to do anymore, mostly because they are all things considered to be naughty (like showing her underpants to a boy, disrupting class at school, and glueing her brother's slippers to the carpet as shown on the cover). I especially like how she's not allowed to give the gift of califlower anymore. Very hilarious!

As a middle child, there were often things I wasn't allowed to to either. For example, after leaving the glue gun sitting on my mother's ironing board with the power on, I wasn't allowed to use the glue gun anymore. After using house paint on my mother's cutting board, I wasn't allowed to use house paint anymore (or touch my mother's kitchen things.) And after cutting my own hair (when it was halfway down my back) I wasn't allowed to use scissors anymore.

The pictures in this funny book add so much to the story. Would that we all could be rendered so artistically when we are creating mischief!

So Few of Me by Peter H. Reynolds

Are you a list maker? I love to make lists. They seem to help me organize my thoughts as well as the tasks I want to do in any given time. However, sometimes just the thought of starting a list can be daunting, especially if the list is bound to go on and on.

This book is about Leo. Leo is a busy person who has a lot to do. He organizes his tasks on lists and realizes how much easier it would be if there were two of him. I have felt like this so many times! Leo thinks he's lucky when the doorbell rings and another Leo appears! This book is a little like a counting book...as the pages turn, the Leos keep appearing. But somehow, the more Leos there are, the more work there is to do and the less time there is to dream.

The sparse illustrations in this book are charming and the endpapers (lists in and of themselves) are so telling in their message with tasks like, "Prioritize!" and "Go faster!" and "Write to Aunt Iris."

A day is just a day and what it's for is up to us. Leo reminds us of that.