Imagine a fluffy yellow chick who, instead of wings, has very long, skinny and dangling arms. Elizabeth Rose Stanton’s debut picture book, Henny, is a gentle tale about just such a chicken. Preschoolers will relish this saga about the pluses and minuses of being different.

On some days Henny feels triumphant as the other barnyard animals gaze at her in awe; but at other times, they simply laugh, sending Henny to the corner to cry. As Henny grows up, she frets about a multitude of un-chicken-like issues, such as being right-handed or left-handed, or the intricacies of using gloves, mittens and buttons.

Stanton’s watercolor and pencil illustrations wonderfully convey Henny’s changing emotions in lively, understated drawings. Stanton also injects wonderful humor along the way: Henny worries “about things she didn’t quite understand?like tennis elbow, and hangnails, and whether she might need deodorant.” There is wordplay as well, as when Henny realizes she can “comb her comb.”

Readers will cheer as Henny learns to turn her difference into an asset. She starts helping Mr. Farmer with chores and enjoys having the ability to point, twiddle her thumbs and cross her arms. She begins imagining the many things she may be able to do, such as hailing a taxi, joining a circus and even flying.

Stanton turns Henny’s accomplishments into a visual feast as this unusual chicken does things like balance on figure skates and swing through the air on a trapeze. Henny’s journey of adjustment and empowerment is a useful lesson for young children, told in a fun, imaginative way.

Good things happen when author Amy Gibson kisses and tells. “Everyday, everywhere, kisses are flying,” she writes in Catching Kisses, an endearing tribute to the transfer of love that occurs with one simple act: the blowing of kisses through the air from one person to another.

With gently flowing text, Gibson puts all five senses to work to describe what a kiss can do. We can hear some kisses “SMACK!” like bubble gum. They can smell of ginger and cinnamon, as well as fresh bread and hot chocolate. We can see them zig and zag “through taxis and buses and streams of bicycles.” When they touch us, they can tickle, especially those as “velvet as peach fuzz.” And Gibson knows how to put captivating figurative language to work, such as when she writes that kisses are as “soft as lamb’s wool, but strong as steel.”

Maria van Lieshout’s digital illustrations, rendered on a cool, blue-themed palette with attractive splashes of reds and yellows, take readers on a trip around the country—from seaside towns to deep forests to Main Street. Popular landmarks lend specificity to many spreads, such as Times Square, the Washington Monument, the Golden Gate Bridge and more.

Blowing kisses isn’t only for starry-eyed couples. There are mothers with newborns, children with their caretakers, mama cats licking their kittens and lots more. It all adds up to a comforting story, one that would make an excellent bedtime read for the youngest of children. After all, kisses might be invisible, but they’re real. And “once a kiss is given . . . it can never be taken away.”

Soothing and solacing words, perfect for sharing just before tucking in at night. And sealing with a kiss.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children's literature blog primarily focused on illustration and picture books.

There’s nothing like a snow day, especially if it’s the first snow day of the season. This magical day is delightfully celebrated in You Make Me Smile. The young narrator begins by saying, ”Of all the days in the seasons of the year, today is a very special day. You might not think so yet, but it really is!” She’s addressing her friend, the snowman that she’s about to build.

At the book’s start, the snow hasn’t started yet, which allows author Layn Marlow to use rich, earthy tones to set the stage with the winter landscape. Her heroine looks up with calm anticipation as she wanders among the birch trees near her home. On another spread, the girl gazes out the window of her house at the gray sky, and soon lights up with excitement as snowflakes begin to fill the air. The book unfolds like a soft, snowy day, as this child and her father happily embrace winter’s gift.

Once the snow begins to accumulate, our narrator pulls on her coat and rushes out, addressing her snowman in the making: “Soon you’ll be standing outside in the bright, white world. You’ll be cold, cold, cold, with a radish-red nose.” We watch step-by-step as the girl builds her new friend, who, of course, makes her smile.

Marlow's quiet tale, first published in England, celebrates anticipation, joy, friendship and the passing of seasons. As the snow melts, this young snow lover muses, "A year may pass, but if you wait, we can share a snowy smile again."

The Nowhere Box, from debut author/illustrator Sam Zuppardi, is an invigorating tribute to the power of a child’s imagination. In it, we meet George. He has two little brothers, and collectively they ruin his playtime. They deface his painting; the ball in their tossing game lands on his head; they wreck his train tracks; and they follow him everywhere.

But have no fear! The delivery man is here, bringing a box mammoth enough to deliver the family’s new dryer. Anyone who’s ever been in the same room with a child and a cardboard box of any size knows the magnetic pull these boxes possess. But extra-large boxes are special and allow for particularly inventive play.

Better yet, this box actually hides George, who slips inside and enters Nowhere. It’s a rousing land of sea, sky and coaster. In multiple spreads, Zuppardi lets George’s imagination run wild, and it’s here that he introduces actual cardboard into his mixed media illustrations, making readers want to touch the pages. The roller coaster track and ocean waves are composed of cardboard strips, and these thick pieces bring a rough-hewn, concrete quality to George’s inner world.

Zuppardi’s loose, energetic lines and primarily full-bleed spreads bring us George’s highs and lows—his manic glee in escaping his siblings and, when the book opens, his despair at their intrusions. There’s a certain level of hyperbole at work here that is very funny. For one, any time George sulks in the book’s opening, he flourishes a large, exaggerated frown with one simple line, one that nearly covers the whole bottom half of his face, not unlike a child might draw. It’s all or nothing for George, who’s having one emotional roller-coaster of a day. And even the middle of Nowhere, it turns out, is no fun without little brothers who can be enemy pirates.

If The Nowhere Box is any indication, Zuppardi’s career is going somewhere. I look forward to what he brings readers next.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children's literature blog primarily focused on illustration and picture books.

Ever seen a bedtime book for children get them all worked up instead? Often a story can excite a child, the opposite intended effect for a nighttime routine. This isn’t likely to happen with Emily Winfield Martin’s Dream Animals: A Bedtime Journey, the gently paced, rhyming tale of imaginary nocturnal creatures taking sleeping children on nighttime adventures.

“There are animals from long ago / And twice as far away. / Their maps are made of starlight / And can’t be seen by day,” the story opens. These creatures are in charge of delivering children to Dreamland, and it’s their quirky destinations that keep this sweet story from being altogether too cloying. A bear carries a bespectacled boy to “meet peculiar friends” at a “misfit table,” which seats Humpty Dumpty, a robot and more. There’s also a circus with a monkey on a unicycle and small, green, elvish creatures atop a crescent moon.

As if a direct descendant of Mary Chalmers, Martin’s very painterly illustrations feature a moderately romanticized view of childhood, replete with well-behaved, doe-eyed children. It’s a throwback, as if she’s paying homage to the picture books of the mid-1950s. She pulls it off without being derivative. There’s even a refreshing and subtle sense of darkness to some of the spreads; one girl stands in an elfin hollow, and readers can only wonder what magic lurks in the dark beyond her visit with the fairies. Bunnies and bears, your typical picture book fare, are tempered by the inclusion of more unusual animals, such as narwhals and a large moth, with the fantastical, ethereal spreads conveying a kind of gravity in spots.

Many pages feature children sleeping with the stuffed animal versions of the creatures who appear in their dreams (also featured on the elegant endpapers). These are simple drawings on pages the color of a blue, twilight sky, but they’re followed by full-color fantasy visions, made all the more striking by this color contrast.

It’s dreamy, a beautiful send-off to sleep.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children's literature blog primarily focused on illustration and picture books.

Cat lovers, in particular, will want to take note of Inga Moore’s new picture book, the endearing tale of Captain Cat.

A world-traveling trader, Captain Cat has earned his nickname from his crew, given that he has more cats than sailors on board his ship. He loves to settle down in his cabin with his cats while searching his maps for the next adventure. He’s traded many a precious jewel for a cat, for which other traders have mocked him. (“No wonder he never makes any money!”)

After landing on a remote island after a storm, Captain Cat and his felines meet a plucky and welcoming young queen. She and her islanders have never seen a cat before. She’s pleased and invites the captain and all his cats to stay. Even better, she discovers the cats are capable of ridding the island of the pesky rats that have plagued them. She offers Captain Cat diamonds, pearls and rubies if he’ll leave his cats on the island to keep the rats in check. When Captain Cat’s fellow traders eventually find out, they head to the island with exquisite wares for trading, only to be handed “the finest our island has to offer,” a basket of newborn kittens. Disgusted, they return them to Captain Cat.

There’s more to this curious tale, which delights in its unexpected twists. Just when you suspect one thing will happen, Moore surprises you with another, even throwing in a bit of chummy commentary, spoken directly to the reader. When Captain Cat decides to leave the island with the queen’s treasures, Moore writes, “But before you cry, ‘Oh! How could he? Didn’t he love his cats?’ let me tell you. . . .” And at another of the story’s unexpected turns, she writes, “But the story doesn’t end here. Not at all. If anything, this is where it gets really good.”

Moore’s sprawling mixed media spreads create a vivid, detailed world, and the quirky story charms.

Dare I say: It’s the cat’s pajamas.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children's literature blog primarily focused on illustration and picture books.

The Snatchabook, an irresistible new release from Helen and Thomas Docherty, is the tale of an unlikely little book bandit and the reason he went to the bad side. When young readers get wind of what goes on in this thrilling story, they may stand sentry at their shelves.

Set in Burrow Down, a hillside in the woods that’s home to a furred and feathered menagerie of readers—squirrels, possums, owls and rabbits, bibliophiles all—The Snatchabook harks back to the classics, bringing to mind the insular, animal-inhabited worlds of A.A. Milne and Richard Scarry. The Dochertys’ forest-dwelling characters live in dens and hollow trees—all cozily appointed, of course—and possess decidedly human dispositions. They talk and walk upright and, perhaps most importantly, they apply human-style logic to the solving of problems.

A problem is exactly what they’re faced with when, all around Burrow Down, books begin to disappear. During a snug night of reading in bed, bunny Eliza Brown is astonished when her book whizzes away through an open window. The Owl clan and the Squirrel family have the same experience, as books inexplicably vanish from their hands and shelves. Who could possibly be behind the thievery?

Eliza, determined to solve the mystery, assembles a stack of volumes to tempt the culprit. When he takes the bait, she finds herself face to face with the guilty party—a wee creature with wings, a billowy tail and a melancholy demeanor, who admits that he’s a “Snatchabook” and confesses to his crime: “I know it’s wrong, but can’t you see—I’ve got no one to read to me!”

Eliza soon reforms the Snatchabook, and, while the inhabitants of Burrow Down snooze, he replenishes their denuded shelves. In the end, the mischievous little outsider becomes a part of the book-loving community. Best of all, he’s read to regularly by Eliza.

The Snatchabook is a tale that feels wonderfully old-fashioned (high praise these days!). Helen Docherty employs a Seuss-inspired writing style, complete with clever rhymes, and Thomas Docherty brings Burrow Down to life through his antic watercolor illustrations. He packs the pages with wonderful details (check out the cool carrot design on Eliza’s bedside lamp), and his large-eyed animals are adorable.

Parents, prepare yourselves: Burrow Down is a place the little ones will want to visit again and again.

In this clever retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood,” Little Red, one of many students in pencil school, is learning the basics of creative writing and storytelling from her teacher, Ms. 2. Having learned what a story path is, all laid out on Ms. 2’s blackboard in the book’s first spread, Red decides she wants to write a story about bravery: “Red is the color of courage,” so she’s up for the challenge.  

With a basket from her teacher of 15 red words to use during times of trouble, she heads out, only to get bogged down by adjectives in the “deep, dark, descriptive forest.” After that, she meets Conjunction Glue and a truck full of adverbs (“We deliver speedily”) and gets carried away with run-on sentences that hardly carry her story. Following a growly sound, she eventually meets her wolf-like nemesis, a sharp-toothed pencil sharpener, who threatens to end her and who has already swallowed Principal Granny. Never fear. This intrepid little red pencil gallantly fights evil. Elements #2 and #3 of the story path, after all, are “Trouble” and “Even bigger trouble.” But in the end, one fixes the trouble. And Red heroically does so. 

In Joan Holub’s Little Red Writing, young readers will learn a lot about story structure and storytelling tools—and likely without even realizing it. Melissa Sweet has much fun—the punny kind, too—with her playful illustrations, literally animating words (the initial letters of “suddenly, abruptly, & surprisingly” on the adverb spread have teeth and astonished looks in their eyes) and bringing pencil school to vibrant life with her observant details and smart design sense. (One poster on the wall notes the sewing club, which makes “pencil skirts.”) Sweet even puts the front and final endpapers to work to help tell the story.

This is an A-plus venture all the way, one that celebrates words and stories and is sure to entertain wannabe writers.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children's literature blog primarily focused on illustration and picture books.

Books about bunnies are sweet, right? Not one that’s created by the imaginative team of Jon Scieszka (The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales), Mac Barnett (Extra Yarn) and illustrator Matthew Myers (Clink). Their irreverent picture book, originally titled Birthday Bunny, starts out harmlessly enough with an inscription from Gran Gran to Alex, wishing her “little birthday bunny” a special day. But in this testament to daydreaming kids everywhere, Alex has another story to tell.

The boy scratches through the printed type of grandma’s gift book and fills in his own words, turning Birthday Bunny into Battle Bunny! With his super birthday powers, Battle Bunny will put his Evil Plan into action. Where once an adorable cotton-tailed bunny was hopping through the forest, now an eye-patch-wearing bunny with a saw in hand—thanks to Alex’s improvised pencil sketches—makes his way, chopping through the trees. And instead of meeting his woodland friends, Badger, Squirrel, Bear and Turtle, he battles the president’s special forces: El Tejon, the great wrestler, Sgt. Squirrel, Shaolin Bear and Ninja Turtle.

The animals are not the only characters fighting to determine the world’s fate, however. Alex draws himself into the story, working alongside the president to help stop Battle Bunny. As Alex’s imagination goes into full force, his edits and drawings become bigger and bolder. When the defeated woodland animals gather for Bunny’s birthday . . . err, world domination, Alex remembers that he has special birthday powers, too. Celebrating a birthday or saving the world—both give reasons to cheer.

After cheering, readers will want to reread this clever retelling to savor the meticulous attention given to both text and illustration, from menacing eyebrows to megatron bombs. Parents, on the other hand, will rethink keeping any art supplies near beloved books.

Fans of Eric Carle won’t want to miss his latest offering, a tribute to friendship based on one of the author’s own childhood experiences.

As the book opens, we see two friends playing together happily. By the next spread, however, the boy is sad. His friend has moved away. He takes a deep breath, counts to 10 and heads out to find her. He swims a wide, cold river under a starry sky. He scales a steep mountain. He makes his way through the tall, damp grasses of a meadow. On and on he journeys: Rain, fatigue and dark shadows won’t stop him. Eventually, he finds her, giving her the same bouquet of flowers featured on the book’s title page. “I knew you would come,” she says.

The children are featured only on the first couple of spreads, as well as the last one. All the brightly colored pages in between feature Carle’s signature broad brush strokes, very texturized paper tissue collages and abstract renderings, pared down to their essentials. The meadow is merely a series of thick, green brush strokes. The river is composed of large, wavy lines in various shades of blues and greens, undulating across the page. There’s no boy in sight, as if to emphasize the enormity of the journey—or perhaps to put readers into the boy’s own shoes.

On a closing spread, Carle shares a childhood photo of a friend, now lost to him, but on the dust jacket, we read that his wife, Bobbie, was inspiration for the book as well. Friends is a sweet story of devotion for the youngest of readers.

For parents who can’t get past the saccharine sentiments expressed in some picture books about love, You Are the Pea, and I Am the Carrot offers a refreshing, lighthearted antidote. As a young boy (with a head as round as a pea) and a girl (as slender as a carrot, with orange hair to boot) picnic in the grass, they croon a tune that features classic food pairings. Readers can almost hear the rhyming ode set to music as butter and bread waltz across the page, a biscuit and jam sip coffee at a Parisian café, a marshmallow and graham cracker huddle by a campfire, and a funnel cake skis downs a powdered sugar mountain.

The refrains return to the boy and girl, who sum up the adorable, digitally enhanced food pairings and their own friendship: “We belong together. / We’re such a tasty sweet. / We’re yummy, scrumptious morsels. / We’re the perfect little treat.”

This celebration of love makes a soothing bedtime story or a touching gift for children and adults alike. Educators and creative youngsters will see more possibilities as they ponder other famous pairings, edible or not. Simply delicious!

A word of warning to parents: Before you and your young one peruse the pages of My Blue Is Happy, equip yourself with crayons and paper. You’ll be besieged by requests for both well before the story’s end. In this delightfully original picture book, author Jessica Young takes a fresh look at familiar colors, using them as the foundation for a story that celebrates individuality and the pleasures of living in a world informed by multiple perspectives.

Beginning with blue, the astute little brown-haired girl who serves as the story’s narrator reflects on a rainbow’s worth of hues, only to find that her impressions of them differ sharply from those of her pals, parents and siblings. Her mom’s orthodox interpretation of the color yellow, for instance—“cheery . . . like the summer sun”—just doesn’t ring true. “My yellow is worried like a wilting flower and a butterfly caught in a net,” the girl says.

Although her ideas go against the grain, she has grit enough to stick by them. Pink, according to her best friend, is pretty, like the tutus they wear in ballet class. But the hue has unhappy connotations for our heroine, bringing to mind bug bites and stepped-on gum. Black, for her brother, takes the form of fanged shadows on a wall. Yet the girl doesn’t find the color scary—on the contrary! “My black,” she insists, “is peaceful like the still surface of a lake and the spaces between the stars.”

One by one, the spunky narrator upends the conventional views of colors (this is a girl who knows her own mind!), overturning tired clichés and offering untraditional takes on each shade. The upshot of this smart little story: We all have singular perspectives. It’s okay to be unique—to have ideas and opinions that deviate from the norm.

Young brings a poetic sensibility to this imaginative tale. She has a knack for coming up with inventive metaphors. Her brief, verse-like sentences are enlivened by Catia Chien’s expressive acrylic illustrations. Together, they’ve created a book that encourages kids to think independently and creatively. Remember: Keep those crayons handy!

William Wegman’s first new book in 10 years comes with an unexpected twist. Once again, Wegman features photographs of his Weimaraners—dogs with piercing blue eyes and personality-plus. But instead of the usual photos depicting the canines in elaborate costumes and settings, he adds paint to the pictures to create the hilarious scenes of Flo & Wendell. This merging of media is a visual treat, and the dogs’ deadpan, all-too-human expressions add to the fun.

The lighthearted and slightly satirical story introduces us to Flo and her little brother Wendell, who are part of a family where everyone is a creative type, but in very different ways. Dad paints large by-the-numbers canvases, while Mom is so crazy about knitting that she even knits a sweater for the family car.

Flo, with a pink bow perched atop her head, is never short on drama. She recruits her less-than-enthusiastic brother for all sorts of activities like dress-up and hide-and-seek. Wendell has interests of his own, including soccer and cooking (he even whips up a dish with tuna fish and chocolate syrup).

Speckled with a big sister’s teasing and a little brother’s ability to roll with the punches, Flo & Wendell reflects the sibling negotiations that many of us endured while growing up, but in a whimsical, furry new way.

RELATED: Read an interview with William Wegman about the creation of Flo & Wendell.