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Go ahead, say that baseball isn’t the national pastime anymore. Say that football or the NBA has superseded it, and that kids really aren’t interested. Considering the state of the game and the bucks other sports are raking in, that argument sounds plausible to me. Just don’t tell that to Matt Tavares. He understands that bone-crunching tackles and fast breaks are hardly the thing memories are made of, and that baseball, with its slower pace and generations-long history, has connections that transcend the game. He made this point beautifully in his first book, Zachary’s Ball, and he does so again in his new offering, Oliver’s Game.

Oliver Hall loves baseball, and no wonder; his granddad lives in the shadow of Chicago’s Wrigley Field and runs a sports memorabilia shop on the ground floor of his brownstone. One day, while helping him out in the store, Oliver stumbles upon a baseball relic unlike any other, one with a family connection. Much to his surprise, he discovers that his grandfather played for the Chicago Cubs for an afternoon! Tavares is a New Englander by birth and a Red Sox fan by heritage. He’s not much older than the characters he portrays, having graduated from Bates College in 1997. Zachary’s Ball was in fact born out of his senior thesis, and it portrays Boston’s Fenway Park as intimately as it does the characters. In Oliver’s Game, Tavares turns his attention to the “friendly confines” of Wrigley Field and his illustrations are every bit as breathtaking. His art has a wonderful depth and tangibility (as they say in baseball, “good eye, good eye”).

Oliver’s Game can be appreciated by anyone who loves baseball if you’re old enough to hold a bat, you’ll like this book. It’s a gentle paean to a lovely sport, to a way of life. It’s about dreams: dreams lost, dreams regained. It’s about learning to live with the pitches you’re thrown and remembering that there’s always another at bat. Who knows, next time you might hit it out of the park. Matt Tavares certainly did. James Neal Webb is a long-suffering Red Sox fan.

Childhood is ideally all about imagination, and Mud Is Cake celebrates that premise with a joyful marriage of text and art. This idea is repeated with many variations, starting with the first pages: Mud is cake/if you pretend/and don’t really take a bite. And juice is tea/with a fairy queen/if you act it out just right. I’ve long been a fan of artist David McPhail (the Pig Pig books, Santa’s Book of Names), and here, his work brings Pam Mu–oz Ryan’s fittingly spare text to life.

A boy and girl both listen to their mother read as it rains outside. Once the sun comes out, they go to play in the fresh mud, and a rainbow appears. The two launch their imaginations full force, turning their stuffed animals into actors in a series of self-created dramas, becoming magicians, band members, sailors, explorers and more, with their animal friends joining the fun on every page. Bear and elephant are transformed into a king and queen, dog becomes a circus performer, lion snoozes in a tent. The children ride spaceships, become pirates, monsters and rulers of fortresses in glorious, adventurous romps. One of the spreads would make a fabulous poster: the boy, girl and their menagerie march out from giant copies of Mother Goose, The Wind in the Willows and The Jungle Book, celebrating both books and imagination. McPhail’s watercolors have a nicely understated, old-fashioned appeal, reminiscent in energy and action to Maurice Sendak’s classic Where the Wild Things Are.

Although this book has a message, it’s never heavy-handed. Kids will drink up the theme without ever tasting the medicine. While the simple text could easily be read to a two-year-old (and the illustrations appreciated by all ages), kids probably need to be about four or older to fully grasp the theme of how simple objects and ideas can spawn fully realized journeys of the imagination.

As Mud Is Cake concludes: You can be most anything/in dreams, or wide awake./If you agree that juice is tea . . . /. . . if you believe/that mud is cake. Bring on the mud pies!

Lately the books my editor sends me to review happen to mirror what’s going on in my own life. A Big Bed for Jed arrives just as my twin daughters are about to leave their cribs behind for beds a difficult transition in the life of a youngster.

I don’t remember seeing another children’s book addressing this rite of passage. Writer Laurie Friedman based this tale on her son’s fears and her own crafty solution. The title page sets the stage as workers unload a brand new bed from a delivery truck while a worried-looking Jed gazes out his bedroom window. Next, we see Jed blissfully enthroned in his cheery blue crib, looking ready to stay there for the rest of his life. Jed’s entire family, including his mother, father, sister, aunt, uncle and grandma join in the celebration of this new bed, urging him to give it a try. Like any self-respecting toddler, Jed flat-out refuses, ignoring all their chirpy cajoling. Not until the relatives huddle to come up with a plan, pile into the bed and pretend to snooze does Jed stake his claim on the bed, proclaiming, But that’s my big bed! Young children will enjoy this bedtime rumpus told in Friedman’s rhyming text. Lisa Jahn-Clough’s childlike pen and gouache illustrations feature bold colors and angles that convey plenty of action. Her insights into Jed’s thoughts and fears are comically true to life: he envisions his big new bed as being perfect for a giant and pictures himself tumbling out, beginning a seemingly endless series of somersaults. Jahn-Clough wisely chooses to show no details of Jed’s room except his family, his crib and his bed, because that’s all we need to focus on.

From a parental point of view, I don’t plan to read this book to my girls until well after they’ve made their own transitions from cribs to beds; there’s no point in unnecessarily suggesting fears or problems before they actually happen. And as a mother, I had to chuckle after reading the book, because its ends as Jed finally snuggles into his new bed and his mom turns out the lights. What happened then, I wondered? Alice Cary writes from Massachusetts.

It’s not every day that one begins the afternoon attending a fencing match and, by evening, is engaged in full-on conflict with shape-shifters, goblins and dwarves. Unfortunately for the Grace children Mallory, the fencer, and her twin brothers Jared and Simon such goings-on have become common since the children discovered the Spiderwick’s Guide. The Ironwood Tree, the fourth and latest installment in The Spiderwick Chronicles, is yet another example of the wondrous things that happen when artist-and-author Tony DiTerlizzi (The Spider and the Fly, et al) and novelist Holly Black (Tithe: A Modern Faery Tale) decide to get together and create something fantastic.

In keeping with the preceding trio of Spiderwick books, The Ironwood Tree is told in a humorous, matter-of-fact tone, no matter what wild circumstances or frightening creatures pop up. So it doesn’t seem all that strange that a typical day for the children might entail fending off otherworldly creatures intent on taking the Guide from them creatures that are willing to engage in all sorts of skullduggery should the children not comply. After all, being a kid can be pretty rough some days, whether it’s ogres or mean schoolmates that bedevil us.

Mom is unaware of the bizarre goings-on, and the twins are loath to confide in her when they realize Mallory has been kidnapped shortly after trouncing her fencing opponent. The boys realize their sister is probably helpless at the hands of angry captors, so they set off to rescue her. Will they be able to help? Will the adults in their town believe what is happening? Can a scary situation be remedied? The Ironwood Tree will of course appeal to fans of the Spiderwick series, as well as admirers of fairy tales, whether the modern-day Lemony Snicket sort or those of the classic Snow White ilk. It’s a book that’s sweet in its understanding of what it’s like to be a kid, and rife with deliciously suspenseful scenes.

Linda M. Castellitto has never met any goblins, but she has encountered a few ogres.