The Great Fuzz Frenzy by Janet Stevens / Illustrated by Stevens Crummel

This is a great picture book about a community of prairie dogs whose lives are changed when a dog drops a bright green tennis ball down into their town. One of them accidentally ends up with a fuzzy piece of the tennis ball on his head and this starts a new fad where to be "cool" you must have fuzz. Of course, the fuzz cannot last forever and once it's gone the frenzy starts. Everyone is trying to get everyone else's fuzz! A fun twist at the end leads the prairie dogs to try their paws at cooperation to end the frenzy once and for all. And it works. The book ends happily ever after...but on the end papers we see...

...the same dog, this time with a bright orange tennis ball! What will the prairie dogs do this time! You will have to imagine it out yourself.

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