Billie B. Little

Former Montessori teacher Maripat Perkins’ debut picture book, Rodeo Red, will wake up the drowsiest bedtime-story reader. Illustrator Molly Idle (Flora and the Flamingo) brings drama and an animated sensibility to the story of the wild, wild west.

Rodeo Red’s favorite things in the world are her cowboy hat, her lasso and her stuffed hound dog, Rusty. Suddenly, Sideswiping Slim, a new baby, shows up and ruins everything. Rodeo Red thinks that “anybody who hollered that much would be hauled to the edge of town and told to Skedaddle.” But the Sheriff and her Deputy—aka her parents—seem smitten, so Rodeo Red decides to lay low—but things don’t get any better.

When Rusty goes missing, Rodeo Red knows who is to blame. Slim has fallen asleep with poor Rusty in his clutches. She tries to get Rusty back but ends up hollering at Slim, who wakes the whole house. “Wouldn’t you know Slim would have the law on his side?” she says.

A belated birthday gift from Rodeo Red’s Aunt Sal may prove just the impetus to get Rusty back. After all’s said and done, Red climbs on her rocking horse to put her boots up for a spell before the next adventure. No doubt there will be many.

Billie B. Little is the Founding Director of Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, a hands-on museum in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

This charming book by Sebastian Meschenmoser has the feel of a classic fable. Mr. Squirrel and the Moon begins with an illustration of a large yellow circle of cheese that bounces out of a wheelbarrow, shoots down a hillside and soars off a cliff.

Where-oh-where does it land? You guessed it—on a slender limb on Mr. Squirrel’s tree. You can imagine Mr. Squirrel’s surprise at finding the moon on his branch, and what if someone thinks he’s stolen it? He worries he’ll be put in jail.

Determined to rid himself of the moon, he manages to shove it off the branch and onto the ground—where it lands on Mrs. Hedgehog and gets stuck to her quills. When a billy goat happens along and tries to free her, he impales the moon—with the hedgehog attached—against a nearby tree. Mr. Squirrel watches in dismay as a swarm of bees and a mischief of mice smell the moon and go to town, eating all but a sliver.

Then the goat rigs up a slingshot that flings the sliver of moon into the sky. As the three friends sit and stare at the crescent moon above, Mr. Squirrel trusts it will soon return to its old self again. This clever romp is a perfect bedtime book.

Billie B. Little is the Founding Director of Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, a hands-on museum in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The title of Diane and Christyan Fox’s clever new picture book, The Cat, the Dog, Little Red, the Exploding Eggs, the Wolf, and Grandma is quite a mouthful. Add impish characters that nearly fly across the page, and humor clearly awaits.

A particularly punctilious Cat sits reading “Little Red Riding Hood” to smart-alecky Dog who won’t be still. We all know Little Red wears a red cape. So, naturally, Dog wonders about her special powers. Is her superpower kindness? Does she hypnotize bad guys into being nice? Dog gets excited when Wolf—the bag guy—enters the story. He hopes Little Red will use kindness rays on him or maybe exploding eggs. Dog says he would notice right away if a wolf tried to dress up like his grandma. Little Red is not too bright.

Cat becomes more and more perturbed with Dog’s interruptions. When she gets to her favorite part of the story, she yells, “All the better to eat you up!” and chases Dog around the room.

Luckily, Red Riding Hood’s father arrives, chopping off the wolf’s head. “They all lived happily ever after,” Cat reads.

Dog suspects that Wolf didn’t end up so happy. He asks Cat, “Are you absolutely sure this is a children’s book?” Finally, Cat gives up on reading to Dog.

Less a story than a conversation, the language and the lively drawings of Cat and Dog’s antics will amuse children and give adult readers a break from the mundanity of more saccharine bedtime stories.

Billie B. Little is the Founding Director of Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, a hands-on museum in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

The world of Abuelo, written by Arthur Dorros and illustrated by Raúl Colón, is warm, windy, wild and free. The story depicts the affection between a boy and his grandfather, his abuelo, as they ride horseback across the colorful and wide-open backdrop of the Pampas, the vast, low-lying grasslands of Argentina. 

The boy is lucky to have an abuelo gaucho—a grandfather cowboy. Together the boy and his abuelo don ponchos and ride with the wind washing their faces. The pair “ride into the clouds” with el cielo wrapped around them. Grandfather is larger than life and full of laughter, even when his grandson gets off the trail. “That happens to everyone,” he says. He is a gentle man who leads his horse and his young grandson with a calm touch and calmer voice. Even a showdown with a mountain lion doesn’t threaten them. They stay back and stand strong. Grandfather assures the boy that there are many ways to be strong, fuerte.

Sadly, a time comes when the boy’s family must move to the city, but his grandfather’s lessons from the Pampas travel with him. Abuelo’s laugh makes him forget his worries, and at night the boy finds the lights of the city as dazzling as las estrellas sparking in the night sky at home. When a bully threatens him, the boy stands fuerte like a mountain tree, and as he grows to know his new city, Abuelo’s lessons remain with him.

The charming story, sprinkled with Spanish words and paired with gold and blue-hued textural illustrations, is imbued with a gentleness and sense of place that gives it a comforting and palpable feel. Dorros’ language and Colón’s sculptural drawings evoke a time and place of love and safety where any child would like to live, or at least linger.

Billie B. Little is the Founding Director of Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, a hands-on museum in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Meet Cat, the hero of Deborah Underwood’s latest picture book, Here Comes the Easter Cat. This jaunty, bright-eyed little fellow is clearly going places. With so much attention on the Easter Bunny, Cat is getting  grumpy and more than a tad jealous. So he decides to out-do the Easter Bunny by becoming the Easter Cat.

Dressed in a star-studded vest, a bowtie and a top hat, Easter Cat struts across the pages with spunk to spare. Instead of hopping bunny-style, he’ll deliver Easter eggs while straddling a bright, red motorcycle. He has enough panache to take on the Easter Bunny, and he easily steals the show.

Cat has plenty of style, but his penchant for napping poses a problem. He like to take seven naps a day, and when he learns the Easter Bunny never gets a chance to rest, the job seems impossible!

When the real Easter Bunny hops on the page and presents Cat with a chocolate egg, he is so delighted that he springs into action and finds a way to be a very helpful cat indeed. Readers will be sorry to see Cat dash off at the end of the book, but there’s a hint he’ll be back—with even grander plans in mind.

Claudia Rueda’s lively ink and colored-pencil drawings bring Cat to life as he dances, skips and cycles across this sparsely worded book. Underwood’s clever one-sided narrative draws in both reader and listener, and by the story’s end we love Easter Cat more than we’ve ever liked the Easter Bunny, despite those chocolate eggs. After all, who can resist an endearing little cat who only wants to make us proud?

Billie B. Little is the Founding Director of Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, a hands-on museum in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.