3 Terrific New Picture Books: One Featuring an Old Friend

Dangerous!, written and illustrated by Tim Warnes.  There are many words to describe this vocabulary-building romp, a British import:  lively, funny, touching, suspenseful.  A word-loving mole enjoys creating labels and sticking them on everything he sees:  mushrooms, flint, ladybug, even poop!  (Kids go ewwww on the latter and then guffaw.)  One day he comes across a bizarre green object that has him churning out label after label:  lumpy, chunky, muddy, ribbed, peculiar, whopping, and many others.  Turns out to be a crocodile and this terrifies the mole.  Instead of snacking on our hero, the croc starts munching all the labels and this ticks off the mole, leading to a confrontation that results in a delightful, satisfying twist.  A charmer.

 One Busy Day, written by Lola M. Schaefer, illustrated by Jessica Meserve.  Packed with lovely illustrations, this ode to sibling drama is a delight from start to finish.  It's also a tribute to the imagination as Mia tries her best to engage her older brother Spencer who always claims to be to busy to play with her.  So she entertains herself by painting, dancing, and exploring.  The effective book design shows Mia engaging in an activity, and then revealing how she sees herself on the next page.  One page, for example, says "She danced" and we see Mia alone in her room posing in front of a mirror, and then with a flip of the page we read "like a twirly, whirly ballerina" and we see Mia in front of an adoring crowd in a fancy theatre.  She's truly a special character, and Spencer rediscovers this about his cute, multi-talented sister, becoming more and more curious in what she is doing.  This emerges as a moving story, an excellent match of text and art, sweet without being too cloying.

The Pigeon Needs a Bath!, written and illustrated by some guy named Mo Willems.  : )  This new addition to the Pigeon saga is quite simply the best Pigeon book since Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late!.  I read to this to a class the other day and the kids would not stop laughing.  I had them yell "TAKE A BATH!!!" at the Pigeon and they more than willingly obliged.  After a romp in a mud puddle, pigeon has become so dirty it scares off the flies.  "Take a bath dude," one of them buzzes as it soars off the page.  Pigeon refuses to hop in that tub, goes through an amazingly complex routine of making the water too cold, too hot, too lukewarm, too hot, too deep, too shallow, too packed with bath toys, too not enough packed with bath toys, and so on.  Will this persnickety feathered creature learn to love baths?  The answer amuses.  Everything about this book delights, from the brown colored backgrounds to the interactive way the pigeon stands up to the readers ("maybe YOU need a bath!!!").  This will satisfy Pigeon's many fans.