Lynn Beckwith

Renowned children's author and poet Karla Kuskin teams up with Betsy Lewin and her whimsical watercolors to bring young readers a treasure in So, What's It Like to Be a Cat? The story really starts on the title page, where we see a young interviewer settling into a wooden chair, while the cat looks rather comfortable in a canvas director's chair. I guess we know who the star is! The brazen interviewer is a little boy who opens with the question posed in the title. And the cat, a simple short-haired gray slip of a feline, answers all the queries in deft verse. As the interview continues, the boy adopts the same rhyming style and the tale comes to amusing life.

With a generous typeface that could be comfortably read from the reading rug, this book begs to be read in two voices. One voice would be interested, serious and probing. The answer would mimic the illustrations, in which the cat barely tolerates some of the queries. Do you have a kitty bed with your picture at the head? To which our little star responds, I do not have a kitty bed to rest my kitty tail and head. I'd rather sleep most anywhere that's warm and soft: a couch, a chair, a sleeping loft; I'll curl up there. The illustrations here show the cat, four feet in the air, commandeering the couch, snuggling in a Queen Anne chair and climbing up a ladder to the top bunk.

When the cat describes her leaping and dancing ability, Lewin's hilarious and satisfying illustrations soar right along with the cat. Her inner cat silliness spills all over the pages as she bounces and sallies, twirls and springs, because that is a part of me. Sometimes a feline must fly free.

Cat lovers will adore this book and dog lovers will hope for another interview, this time with the earnest boy and a lovable golden retriever. With its hilarious illustrations and easy-to-read format, this will be a book that new readers will return to over and over. And the adults who get to play the part of the cat will not mind one bit.

It's not every day that the intricacies of funerals and funeral homes are center stage in a book for young people. Ten-year-old Comfort Snowberger has attended 247 funerals, all at her family's funeral home. She knows what to wear, how to act, but mostly, she, along with all the other members of the Snowberger clan, knows how to serve others.

Deborah Wiles, author of Love, Ruby Lavender, brings young readers another family they will not soon forget in Each Little Bird That Sings. From the smell that encircles her father after he embalms the deceased, to the proper arrangement of the flowers, to picking up her little sister Merry from her nap in a casket in the downstairs casket room, Comfort's loving family serves their community with skill and care. Their lives are defined by death. When great-great-aunt Florentine dies, the family is faced with a loss that challenges even the most experienced funeral professional.

Comfort has to call on all her resources for surviving sadness as she faces the death and funeral of Aunt Florentine. Her dramatic and adoring cousin Peach becomes her challenging weekend assignment. If he isn't bawling uncontrollably, he is trying to do everything with his beloved cousin Comfort. If that is not enough, her best friend in the world chooses this time to ally herself with a different group of girls older and more sophisticated ones. And just when Comfort gets through the funeral, she is faced with a loss that is bigger than any she has had to face before.

Though the plethora of unusual names (Comfort, Tidings, Declaration and even Eggs Florentine) threatens at times to overwhelm the story, Wiles has a gift for bringing readers into the hearts and minds of her main characters. Comfort wants to be the perfect daughter and friend, but she is just a confused 10-year-old who loves her dog, enjoys writing, plays outdoors and does not want anything to change in her life. As she faces the changes that life throws her way, Comfort grabs onto the reader's heart and refuses to let it go.

Susan Campbell Bartoletti and Beppe Giacobbe team up again for Nobody's Diggier Than a Dog, an exuberant companion to their earlier Nobody's Nosier Than a Cat. And do the dogs dig! From the very first page, the energy level is high and the dogs are hap, hap, happily digging and drinking and fighting and getting into just the sort of trouble that canine friends can, um . . . dig up!

The dogs romp the pages with abandon. It starts with digging a hole, but that is not all the dogs in this book can do. First the dogs are diggier and next they are piggier. "Nobody's piggier than a dog a dribble-drool, toilet-drink, breathy stink dog." Colorful, stylized dogs accompany the joyous text as Giacobbe manages to eke out every bit of emotion in each dog's face and body. In one illustration, the dog's forehead is scrunched up guiltily as she is caught lapping up the toilet water. On each page, all varieties of dogs get into mud, shoes and rain, and show the qualities that dog-lovers treasure in their mutts. They save the day, win the show, run in circles, snore away the day and even make a variety of puddles. The color palette varies with the mood, but the illustrations recall the cutouts of Esphyr Slobodkina from decades before.

Children who love to find the little details will enjoy watching the action in the background. Is that a dachshund chasing a black cat? Yes, it is! And that little pup is relentless; he chases her through each page until the dogcatcher achieves his goal. (And nothing is lonelier than the eyes of a puppy looking out of the dogcatcher's van, I might add.) After the little pup is driven away, the inevitable "Lost Dog" signs show up, and the little boy is reunited with his cuddly "lost-and-found, dog-pound dog."

For readers who love dogs and amusing wordplay, this little gem will be a book to read again and again.

Lynn Beckwith is planning to add an Australian Sheepdog to her soon-to-be-empty nest.

I, Doko: The Tale of a Basket is indeed the tale of a basket, but it is also the tale of a family and a culture. Ed Young adapts a Nepalese story, born of the oral tradition, and with a deft stroke of his talented paintbrush makes it a visual treat for readers and listeners. Like many folktales, there is a lesson at the heart of the story. The lesson has to do with treating older people with respect and deference, even when their intellect is compromised by advancing years. This is heady stuff for the lap listener, but Young's tremendous artistic talent transforms a mere lesson book into an engaging story of a family, a culture and the basket that holds them together.

Doko the basket, who narrates the tale, notices all the changes his family endures as the years progress. His master, Yeh-yeh, chooses him from all the other baskets and takes him home to his wife, Nei-nei, and their new baby son. Doko has many jobs in the family, from toting the new baby to carrying kindling and food. As the years go by, Doko totes the body of its master's wife and the dowry for his grown son. In the end, Doko is called on to tote the elderly Yeh-yeh to the steps of the temple, where he'll be left to the care of the priests. But the youngest member of the family, ordered to carry out this onerous task, comes to his senses and shows himself to be wise beyond his years.

Young's gift is his use of the gentle word and subtle art. Each page is surrounded by a gold frame, and each glorious illustration is speckled lightly with gold paint, creating an antique glow. On one spread, the dry brown earth of drought-stricken Nepal fairly crackles with dust as the sad shapes of the basket-laden people walk barefoot toward the horizon. But despair leads to celebration on the next page, where the brown sky is now the pink and rose and red of good luck and a wedding as the boy joyfully joins his bride and her family.

A rich treat of gouache, pastel and collage from a master of the picture-book form, I, Doko is a book to be pored over.

Welcome to a day in Molly McGinty's world! Today is Senior Citizen's Day at Our Lady of Mercy Middle School and, despite the fact the no other sixth-grader is having guests, Molly knows her grandmother Irene would never miss a chance to return to school. Molly lives with her grandmother, because, "well, she wanted me" after a car accident claimed her parents' lives.

Molly is worried about the school visit because her grandmother is likely to say and do just about anything. Even worse, Molly is freaked out because she has lost her three-ring binder. This is no ordinary binder. This is where she makes her lists, keeps her grandmother's business schedule, stores her bus tokens, files her homework and writes her journal (in code, of course). Her binder is her security blanket, and the endless lists written there are what keep her life in control.

Her friends, the Marys (Mary Margaret, Mary Pat and Mary Bridget), help her retrace her steps, but the notebook does not turn up. Molly has to face the world without her talisman, and the results aren't reassuring. First, Molly falls onto the corner of a piece of furniture and blackens her eye. Things go from bad to worse as Molly ends up covered in spaghetti, embarrassed at her grandmother's coarse language, mortified to be serving detention with her grandmother, drenched with ink, and . . . well, you get the drift.

Molly takes all of these challenges in stride, though. When she realizes why and how her binder has disappeared, she is forced to deal with her anger and face the truth: that she is more than her binder and that she is, after all, loved.

In Molly McGinty Has a Really Good Day, acclaimed author Gary Paulsen has created a touching and honest tall tale of intergenerational love.

Ida B. Applewood (not to be confused with her mother, Ida Applewood) lives in a world where everything is pretty near perfect. Her parents love her, and she loves them. The three of them live on a beautiful Wisconsin farm with lots of land, an apple orchard and a brook. And she has Rufus, a slobbery dog, to keep her company. Ida B has plenty of time to be alone, and she relishes being able to talk to the trees (whom she has named) and share her plans.

One thing she doesn't plan on, though, is that her wonderful world might change. Even when Viola, her favorite tree, tells her that hard times are coming, Ida B's natural optimism dismisses the prediction. But, bad times are coming with a vengeance, and when they do, she will have to face them.

Ida B reacts bravely at first when her mother is diagnosed with breast cancer and begins chemotherapy. She chips in with the chores, reining in her exuberance and tiptoeing around the house when her mother is resting. She understands her mother's mood swings and her father's anxiety. But when her father tersely informs her that their family has to sell a portion of their property (including some of Ida B's favorite trees) to pay medical bills, Ida B can take no more.

Ida B's anger turns her heart cold as she faces these changes. Where she had once been a thoughtful and joyful child, she stubbornly refuses to speak more than a few sentences with her mother, father and even her open-hearted teacher. She refuses the overtures of her classmates and takes no comfort in nature and the trees that had once sustained her.

What makes this novel so memorable is the strong, honest voice of Ida B herself. First-time author Katherine Hannigan creates a narrator who is smart and spirited, yet complicated. When the going gets extremely rough, she is at her worst: alone, bitter, selfish and seething. But, under all her self-imposed hatefulness, she is still Ida B, finding her own way. Young readers will share this book with each other, and those of us who get to share books with young readers will find ourselves buying extra copies so we'll have enough to go around.

Told in alternating chapters, in the voices of twins Pauline and Arlene, January 1905 is a rich historical novel that braids together the details of factory life, the small joys of rare free time and the complexities of sibling jealousy.

In 1905, children worked long and dangerous hours in factories and on farms, doing mind-numbing work. Ten-year-old Pauline drags herself out of bed each morning to face the workday. Her twin sister Arlene, cursed with a crippled foot, works at home. Each girl imagines the other has the easy life, and the envy they feel for one another threatens to tear their little family apart. Pauline works as a bobbin girl in the mill. She begins her day before sunup, leaving her warm bed for the cold walk to the outhouse. Arlene stays in bed until her family leaves for work. Even her younger brother has a job at the mill, sweeping up the lint. The noise of the factory is deafening and the dangers are real. Twelve hours a day, five days a week, they work, with a half day off on Saturday and a day of rest on the Sabbath. Every part of the day is planned around the mill and the income it provides to the family. Arlene, with her crippled foot, cooks and cleans and makes the beds, working all alone for the 12 hours the factory is operating.

When circumstances arise that force Arlene to work, the sisters must face the truth about their jealousies and the reality of life in a mill town. Arlene, finally free from the lonely boredom of her house, realizes that the mill is not nearly as glamorous as she thought. Bitter Pauline, now injured herself, comes to understand all the work her sister has been taking care of at home. Both girls find companionship and love in the most unlikely place.

Though the twin narrative is an unusual one for younger readers, the story is understandable because of the concise text, short chapters and exciting, fast-moving plot. This historical novel represents a fine and final achievement for writer Katharine Boling, who died before the book was published.