Adele & Simon in America
By Barbara McClintock
Frances Foster, $16.95
Ages 7-10 years
Older sister Adele leads Simon through vistas shown in amazing, miniscule detail, while Simon loses, one by one, his belongings. The readers can choose to enjoy the grand fullness of the scenes or just go crazy looking for Simon’s possessions, with all of which he is eventually reunited. (Yes, it’s more fun than life as we know it.) Barbara McClintock, in endnotes, provides a description of the locales and famous people in the crowds, so you can hunt for the hat or Frank Lloyd Wright, for example. All hunting here is happy.
Dinosaur vs. Bedtime
By Bob Shea
Hyperion, $15.99
Ages 3-6 years
Note the title’s important “versus.” The little dinosaur roars through all sorts of conflicts — my favorite is “talking grown-ups” — and wins. Eventually, even the fierce are fatigued.
Bats at the Library
By Brian Lies
Houghton Mifflin, $16
Ages 5-9 years
A book-familiar audience will enjoy most what happens when a friendly librarian leaves the window open and bats get “inside” the books. Lies gives us wonderful images, like clusters of little bats hanging under the furniture at story hour.
Traction Man Meets Turbo Dog
By Mini Grey
Knopf, $16.99
Ages 4-8 years
Traction Man, domestic action hero, appears first climbing up Mt. Compost Heap, with his faithful pet, Scrubbing Brush. A bit later, Scrubbing Brush is judged “unhygienic” and consigned to the trash bin. There’s a new triple-A battery toy, Turbodog, wonderfully annoying. Bravery abounds in the rescue of Scrubbing Brush.
Thump Quack, Moo
By Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Betsy Lewin
Atheneum, $16.99
Ages 3-7 years
The subtitle is carefully spelled, “whacky adventure.” As ever, Duck, not Farmer Brown, knows all that’s going on. A great sub-plot sets up the mice to deliver final punch line: “partly cloudy, chance of duck.”
———-
Mary Harris Russell, professor emerita of English at Indiana University Northwest, reviews children’s books each week for the Tribune.
