The Adventures of a Nose
By Viviane Schwarz, illustrated by Joel Stewart
Candlewick, $14.99
Ages 6-8 years
Don’t read this one too close to little brothers and sisters who might begin to dream about noses falling off or walking away. Nose is a plain sort of guy who just sits around thinking, “Somewhere in the world must be a place just for me.” There’s a more than slightly surreal quality to the illustrations as this nose on legs goes about, whether it’s to the city or exotic lands. Marginalia change with each locale as well: a nose balancing a spoon, for example, across from the picture of Nose in a restaurant. I won’t spoil the plot, but, as they say, just follow your nose (and look in every picture for the face in which he actually fits).
Motorcycle Song
By Diane Siebert, illustrated by Leonard Jenkins
HarperCollins, $16.95
Ages 5-8 years
“There’s the motorcycle guy on his cycle riding by.” And sometimes it’s the motorcycle “mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, riding when they get the chance” as well, but the people aren’t the focus here. It’s the shine and shimmer and thunder of the machines themselves, with the landscapes in which they ride a close second, from small back roads to city streets. (When they ride, the cyclists are all helmeted, by the way.) Diane Siebert makes poetry from names as specific as Suzukis, Nortons and, of course, Harleys. The pictures–dramatic paintings that look designed to dominate big walls–are about American dynamism and variety as much as anything.
Bubba and Beau, Best Friends
By Kathi Appelt, illustrated by Arthur Howard
Harcourt, $16
Ages 3-6 years
“Bubba is the son of Big Bubba and Mama Pearl.” (Yes, we’re in Texas.) Big Bubba is so excited about the birth he honks the horn of his pickup truck, Earl. Beau is a hound-dog puppy (offspring of Maurice and Evelyn, thank you kindly). Bubba and Beau both howl, are “keen on chewing” and are not house trained yet. What this story becomes, however, is not regional but universal: a blankie story. It’s pink, it’s smelly and they both love it. Will they survive that “sad day in Bubbaville,” when Mama Pearl washes the blankie? You know the answer, but Kathi Appelt’s drawling, swingy, storytelling voice, coupled with wonderful pictures, makes the whole event a treat.
Laura Numeroff’s 10-Step Guide to Living With Your Monster
By Laura Numeroff, illustrated by Nate Evans
HarperCollins, $15.95
Ages 4-7 years
There are advice books about siblings and pets. Why not about your very own monster? The advice is delivered in a dead-pan, advice-manual style, and the pictures add the humor. “Pick the monster who can play the banjo and tie his own shoes.” Who else at the “monster shelter” could compete with that combo? Unfortunately, that talent package comes wrapped up with something greener, larger and goofier than any other candidate, but, banjoes and shoes are good, right? Sometimes the advice really isn’t about pets at all, but it’s hard to pass up an opportunity for such a great picture as the one that shows, “Monsters love country-and-western music.” Simple humor, but humor.
In the Space of the Sky
By Richard Lewis, illustrated by Debra Frasier
Harcourt, $16
Ages 3-5 years
A “field for the sun, a sea for the moon”: Here, all the places we think of as vacant–the sky, for example–are filled with objects and with the ideas we can have about them. Debra Frasier’s cut-paper collages provide stunning examples of beauty and art filling the space. Look, for example, at the “sea for the moon,” where clouds double as waves and stars spring out in lines like firework spirals. Cognitive scientists suggest some of our earliest image patterns are of containers, and Richard Lewis and Frasier combine to reveal lovely interiors again and again, as seeds open, snails curl and even dreams open up for us.
