Girl meets squash. Girl decides to love squash like a favorite doll and take squash everywhere.

Although the premise may not sound action-packed, in the hands of first-time author Pat Zietlow Miller and illustrator Anne Wilsdorf, this story of a big, lumpy vegetable becomes a delightfully fun, touching tale.

After the heroine, Sophie, chooses the squash at a farmers' market, Miller writes, "Her parents planned to serve it for supper, but Sophie had other ideas." Sophie soon decides to call her new "friend" Bernice, prompting her bemused mother to philosophize, "Well, we did hope she'd love vegetables."

After a honeymoon period of veggie love, a standoff ensues between Sophie and her parents. Sophie's mom explains (much to Sophie's horror): "Bernice is a squash, not a friend. If we don't eat her soon, she'll get mushy and gross. Let's bake her with marshmallows. Won't that taste yummy?"

Kids and adults alike will enjoy watching the desperate, thoughtful yet ultimately unsuccessful attempts by Sophie’s parents to remedy this culinary clash. Finally, after other children begin to make fun of the deteriorating squash, Sophie figures out the perfect solution as she attempts to cure Bernice of her splotches and "freckles."

Sophie's Squash is a story with a big heart and authentic emotions, also infused with gentle, droll humor with every turn of the page. Miller's words are spot on, while Wilsdorf's lively watercolor-and-ink illustrations bring the story to life with every character's multitude of expressions. This artistic team fully mines the humor of the situation. What's more, to their credit, they take Sophie's dilemma seriously, treating her squash devotion with the humorous respect it deserves.

Sophie's Squash is a charmer, but be forewarned: Your trips to the farmers' market may never be quite the same.

Very young children tend to have great energy, and they have a joyful, infectious sort of hubris to boot. Caldecott Honor-winning author/illustrator David Ezra Stein knows this and embodies this energy in Dinah, a baby dinosaur, the star of his new picture book, Dinosaur Kisses.

Dinah hatches newly from her egg and heads out: “There was so much to see and do.” She stomps and chomps with the grace of a sumo wrestler, but it’s when she sees two prehistoric creatures kissing that she’s determined to try this herself.

The problem, however, is that she lacks the agility to properly pull off a gentle kiss and ends up whomping, chomping and stomping everyone she meets. In one very funny illustration, her kiss turns into a giant bite on the backside of a dinosaur. “Whoops,” she says, as she hangs by her teeth from a brontosaurus rump. Later, she actually swallows another creature in a vain attempt to more carefully use her lips in the act of kissing. There’s a lot of humor in these bumbling moments: In one, she stomps on and flattens a fish walking on two legs. So much for that species. Dinah stomps happily on.

It’s only when another dinosaur baby emerges from a nearby egg that the two come up with their own brand of kissing: more chomping, stomping and whomping. A boisterous head-butt is their version of affection. Great minds think alike.

Infused with lively, attention-grabbing yellows and cheerful, stimulating oranges to match Dinah’s mood, the book is filled with thick black outlines and chunky lettering, including a larger, louder font for the “STOMP!”s and “WHOMP!”s and “KRAK!”s. The book’s dominating horizontal line, as we watch Dinah stomp along the horizon, makes for compelling page turns, also matching the great energy of the book.

It’s big, loud fun for rowdy, raucous toddlers. Mwah!

Mac Barnett likes to break the rules in picture books, such as in 2009’s warped guessing-game book, Guess Again! In his latest picture book, Count the Monkeys, he turns your typical counting book for young children on its head, and the results are terrifically fun.

Barnett and illustrator Kevin Cornell, who both nail the compelling page turn in this book, get right to work on the title page: “Hey, kids! Time to count the monkeys! It’s fun. It’s easy. All you have to do is turn the page. . .” Don’t hold your breath, though: On the first spread, one king cobra has scared off the monkeys, and we see only monkey tails to the right, as the creatures flee. This continues, as we see crocodiles, grizzly bears, bee swarms, lumberjacks, and much more. To be sure, we readers count on each successive spread—up to “ten polka-dotted rhinoceroses with bagpipes and bad breath,” no less. But we count without any actual monkeys. Welcome to Mac’s world: Things are never what you expect.

A book filled with abundant humor and lots of visual treats for children, this one was clearly created as a read-aloud. Barnett invites child readers to participate—move their hands in a zig-zag fashion to confuse the crocodiles, say “thank you” six times to the six sweet old beekeepers, cover their eyes to avoid the seven wolves, and even give each of the eight lumberjacks a high-five—and it’s a thrilling storytime romp, perfect for groups of children at one sitting. Best of all, Barnett is clever and quick-witted, his comic pacing just right: On the mongoose spread, he’s just about to celebrate the disappearance of the king cobra but sidetracks himself: “Look! 2 mongooses have chased away that cobra! Or is that 2 mongeese? I am pretty sure it is 2 mongooses.” Naturally, he asks readers for a vote.  

Cornell’s dry-humored, brightly colored cartoon art is the perfect fit here. He places the reader right in the center of the action—don’t be afraid of that dizzy bee swarm, and be sure not to lock eyes with that wolf right in front of you—and his characters are exaggerated, their facial expressions particularly entertaining. He expertly builds the book’s tension as each spread gets more crowded.

Despite the hand-wringing at the close (“This is terrible! We made it to the end and there are 0 MONKEYS in this book”), this is a book that makes clever use of the endpapers. There may be a last-minute monkey sighting after all, but even if there never were, children would surely enjoy the ride.  

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

It’s positively postmodern: Jeff Mack’s inventive new offering, The Things I Can Do, is a book about a book that takes a close look at the nature of creation, kid-style. Jeff, the story’s narrator, is a spunky little boy who’s taking giant steps, and who’s pleased as punch at his own progress. So pleased, in fact, that he fashions a wrinkled, crinkled, taped-together book to catalogue his accomplishments.

Using crafty odds and ends like stickers, crayons, duct tape and construction paper, Jeff assembles a series of a delightfully rag-tag pages that depict his points of pride—the milestones of little-boy life: He makes his own lunch (almost certainly without parental consent, since the meal consists, suspiciously, of pizza, fries and ice cream)—a colorful jumble of junk food rendered in collage atop a soiled napkin. He takes a bath, the bubbles of which appear to be paper circles salvaged from a hole-punch, and ties his shoe—a construction-paper sneaker, with a chaos of real laces, that’s stuck in a blue wad of gum.

Mack does a brilliant job of channeling a child’s imaginative mentality. Instead of a formal font, he uses clumsy kid handwriting to tell Jeff’s story, and practically all of the drawings are done stick-figure style. The book brims with ingenious details—visual minutiae that bring the story to life. There’s a set of improvised shelves constructed from Popsicle sticks (yes, Jeff puts away his books!), and a toothpaste mustache fashioned from cotton (and he brushes his teeth!). Scraps of newspaper, cardboard and cut-out shapes result in pages that call attention to the creative genius that all children possess.

Through this delightful mash-up of materials, Mack, who wrote and illustrated Hush Little Polar Bear and Clueless McGee, tells the story of an independent and resourceful little boy who savors his newfound responsibilities. As an inspiration for little ones who are learning to set and achieve small goals, Jeff cuts an exemplary figure (lunch selections excepted, of course). Readers of all ages will admire his oomph.

Now that the 4th of July, the most patriotic of holidays, is upon us, the time is right for reconsidering a national classic: “Yankee Doodle,” a quintessentially American tune—a song so well established that its absurdity slips right past us. What, after all, does it mean to stick a feather in your hat and call it macaroni?

Looked at closely, “Yankee Doodle” is less ditty than oddity. So what’s the deal with the song? Who wrote it? And when? Tom Angleberger addresses these mysteries and more in Crankee Doodle, a brilliant new picture book in which his twisted wit is on full display.

Dressed in Revolutionary-era duds of red, white and blue—including a cuffed coat loaded with buttons—Mr. Doodle is snoozing in a grassy pasture when the story opens. The reason for this repose? Ennui. “I’m bored,” Doodle complains to his pony, who is chewing grass nearby. “We could go to town,” his companion suggests. And so begins a series of hilarious exchanges, as the pony proposes various activities for their trip to town (foremost among them: purchasing the proverbial feather). Every one of the horse’s suggestions is humbugged by his grump of a master, who meets each with an extensive volley of complaints (Doodle is a long-winded dandy). After much comical give and take, the pony prevails. Doodle caves, and the two take off for town, but not in the way readers might expect. Capping off their adventure is a historical note explaining the origins of “Yankee Doodle,” which, in truth, seem rather murky.

This is the first picture book from Angleberger, the brain behind the best-selling Origami Yoda titles. His wife, Cece Bell, author and illustrator of the Sock Monkey series, provides the story’s wonderfully loopy line drawings. Together, this creative dream team has taken the tarnish off an American antiquity and created a classic of their own. Crankee Doodle is a charmer.

Poor Duncan. He heads for his crayons one day in class, only to find a stack of letters waiting. He simply wants to color, but instead he has 12 manifestos to read. Little did Duncan know his crayons are beleaguered, bitter and beset with all sorts of headaches.

Purple is about to lose it and would like Duncan to color inside the lines. Black is tired of being used merely for the outlines of things (“how about a BLACK beach ball some time?”), and Pink is tired of limitations (why not a pink dinosaur or cowboy?). Peach wraps it all up with a confession: Since Duncan peeled his paper off, he’s naked and too humiliated to leave the box. There’s much more from the poor, persecuted pieces of wax in author Drew Daywalt’s clever picture book debut, The Day the Crayons Quit.

Each spread shows a crayon’s protest letter on the left and the pontificating crayon on the right. The crayons use Duncan’s drawings to prove their points: Beige wilts in front of a piece of wheat, one of only two things he draws, since Mr. Brown Crayon gets all the fun stuff. In the funniest spread, White Crayon, who feels empty, demonstrates Duncan’s “white cat in the snow,” just two eyes, a mouth, a nose and whiskers in an empty white space.

There’s a lot of humor in Oliver Jeffers’ relaxed, naïf illustrations, made to look like a child’s artwork: a pink monster; Santa Claus on a red fire truck (Red Crayon is tired of working, even on holidays!); and the triumphant, colorful final spread, in which Duncan attempts a piece of art to make all the crayons happy.

Sure to draw in young readers (the crayons demanded I use that pun), this entertaining set of monologues will also tickle their funny bones.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Oliver Jeffers for The Day the Crayons Quit.

In Funny Business, his 2009 collection of interviews with children’s book authors who write comedy, Leonard Marcus notes that humorist Will Rogers once said, “Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.”

In Mo Willems’ new picture book, That Is NOT a Good Idea!, part of the story’s surprise is that it provides a delicious (in more ways than one) twist on who precisely this Somebody Else is.

It is clearer than ever before with this new book that Willems once worked in the field of animation. The story is laid out as if one is watching a silent film. As the book’s cover makes evident, a group of goslings are watching and responding to the action on what we assume is a screen. On the opening spread, rendered via watercolors and pencil with some digital color enhancement, we see a fox has spotted a goose. The next spread—white letters on a black background, just as if we’re seeing the onscreen intertitle of a silent film—has merely “What luck!” on the left and “Dinner!” on the right. Readers assume these are the fox’s words, as he continues to woo the goose, luring her to his home for dinner. (One assumes she’ll be the one cooked, not the one served a meal.)

With the exception of those first two spreads, as well as the final ones, Willems devotes half of each spread to an illustration and the other to the intertitles, the fox’s words consistently on the left and the goose’s on the right. These spreads are alternated with the goslings’ passionate cries of warning about what a disastrous idea it is for her to go to the fox’s home: More and more appear as the story progresses, and they jump and yell, “That is really not a good idea!” It’s funny stuff, these interruptions from the dramatic geese, who are staring right at readers, as if we’re the screen.

The ending reminds us we may have assumed too much in the beginning. Could it have been the goose who initially thought about dinner when she first met the fox? I won’t ruin the finale of this clever, entertaining tale. It makes for a great storytime read-aloud, but just know the reading will likely be interrupted by children laughing loudly and exuberantly.

Like the goose (or was it the fox?), you’ve been warned.

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

Of the many stories about Albert Einstein that are available for young readers, the new picture book by Jennifer Berne and Vladimir Radunsky is one of the best. On a Beam of Light portrays a little boy who is loved and encouraged to follow his own interests and his own way of thinking.

“Over 100 years ago, as the stars swirled in the sky, as the Earth circled the sun, as the March winds blew through a little town by a river, a baby was born. His parents named him Albert,” the story begins. Radunsky’s gestural watercolor-and-ink illustrations capture the spirit of young Albert, as he turned one and two and three and “hardly said a word at all.”

As his parents worried about his development, they loved him and saw him as different but dear. He was a quiet boy who spent his days observing and wondering and thinking. In other words, he was a scientist. Reading Berne’s carefully chosen stories of Albert’s childhood, the young reader begins to understand how this quiet boy became one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century.

The illustrations slow the reader down in a way that is deeply pleasurable. On a page where Einstein is thinking about atoms, Radunsky uses dots of color to paint the whole spread. This joyful departure into pointillism makes the idea of atoms understandable for the young reader. Another favorite is a painting of Einstein, floating in his sailboat, letting his mind wander.

Albert’s questions frame the heart of this winning book. First, he noticed that the compass always pointed north and he wanted to understand why. While riding his bike, he wondered what it would be like to ride on a beam of sunlight. Reading through these stories, it’s impossible not to be inspired, not only by Einstein himself but also by this dazzling account of his life and imagination.

I have no doubt it’s hard to write what picture book author George Shannon, for one, calls “quiet picture books,” the ones that are contemplative and introspective. The challenge is to keep the pace of such stories compelling and to keep them from being, as Shannon writes, “lifeless.”

Cue poet and author Julie Fogliano and Caldecott Medalist Erin E. Stead. With last year’s And Then It’s Spring, they presented such a well-crafted, quiet book, it could be considered a case study in such endeavors. Now they’re back with If You Want to See a Whale, another exquisite story of waiting and wonder.

“[I]f you want to see a whale / you will need a window,” the book opens. As in their previous book, Fogliano gives readers what is essentially a poem, Stead’s challenge being to bring these inviting and abstract words to life with concrete details. In this case, she chooses a young boy—his dog and an ever-present bird as his companions. It is the boy who seeks the whale. He needs time, patience and focus. It’s hard when there are such things in this life as pink, sweet roses, clouds floating by and mysterious ships at sea with “possible pirates.” Fogliano writes with tenderness and humor (“pelicans who sit and stare can never be a whale”). She evokes the beauty and mystery of the boy’s world, capturing a child’s awe without being cloying.

Stead’s primarily pastel-colored illustrations, rendered via linoleum printing and pencil, are finely detailed and endear readers to the boy and his mission. Uncluttered and with ample white space on many spreads, they let this story breathe, fitting for a tale of the big and little wonders of life. Despite all the boy’s interruptions, there is a whale sighting in this book, and Stead renders it so majestically that I literally took in my breath when I turned the page. (And don’t forget to pull off the book’s jacket to see the whale on the cloth cover!)

Sparks fly when these two join forces. Quiet sparks. Here’s hoping they continue to collaborate.

Move over, Madeline—there’s a new Parisian picture-book character to adore in Matthew Olshan’s unusual story, The Mighty Lalouche. At the turn of the 20th century lives a humble postman named Lalouche. Although he’s small and “rather bony,” his hands are nimble, his legs are fast, and his arms are strong. This pint-sized postman has much to love—his pet finch, a room along the Seine (even though it lacks a view) and his handlebar mustache. But when a fleet of electric autocars replaces the mail carrier, Lalouche fears he’ll lose everything he has.

Refusing to give up, he applies for an advertised boxing position. Such hulky champions as the Piston and the Grecque simply laugh at Lalouche and prepare to pulverize him. With her layered ink and watercolor artwork, Sophie Blackall, the talented illustrator of the Ivy + Bean series, creates a 3-D effect that exaggerates the size of the French boxers and Lalouche’s unthinkable matches against them. The endpapers sport funny trading cards of these outlandish athletes.

Using the speed and agility he developed as a postman, Lalouche beats his challengers one by one, even the Anaconda. Although undefeated as a boxer, he knows he must return to his true passion—delivering the mail.

Lalouche proves that true might comes from determination. A new room with a view of the Seine, and even a nook for his beloved finch, is all the reward he needs. This winning tale, c’est ­magnifique!

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Read our interview with illustrator Sophie Blackall for The Mighty Lalouche.

Graphic novel meets picture book in Odd Duck, a humorous and heartfelt story of friendship. Theodora is a creature of habit who spends each day shopping and visiting the library before heading for home, where she always makes the same wish: “Theodora wished that nothing in her happy life would ever change.”

Soon a moving truck arrives next door, disrupting her happy life and depositing all manner of oddities: smelly chairs, umbrella sculptures and a giant cardboard chicken. Though Theodora is worried, she is a gracious bird, and she bakes a cake for her new neighbor, Chad. She tries to look beyond his oddly colored feathers, lack of manners, splashy swimming and loud construction jobs, but her only hope is that Chad will fly south with the other ducks when winter comes.

Chad isn’t bothered by the cold, however, and that allows this odd couple to develop a friendship. Starting with their mutual love of constellations, the two ducks end up having lots in common. Chad and Theodora spend all their time together until one day, a comment from other ducks threatens their friendship. The comment? “Look at that odd duck!”

Each thinks the comment is aimed at the other, causing a rift between them. It takes some serious soul-searching to allow these true friends to mend the split, understanding that they are both odd in their own ways.

Readers who are struggling with friendships will be heartened that these ducks are able to deal with their differences. Kids with a quirky sense of humor will be drawn to the graphic elements but will stay for the endearing story.

In a lively new picture book, first-time author Susan Verde captures a girl’s experience of an art museum as a creative space filled with fun and imagination. A far cry from the familiar portrayal of museums as boring and stale, The Museum shows children how to enjoy the art-viewing experience and make it their own.

Verde’s text marches along in rhyming stanzas: “When I see a work of art /something happens in my heart. / I cannot stifle my reaction. / My body just goes into action.” Accompanying illustrations by Peter H. Reynolds, known for his Judy Moody artwork, portray a young girl physically invigorated by the works of art around her. She dances after seeing Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” saddens at a blue-faced painting and gets hungry when she sees a still life with apples. The girl and the museum are drawn in light washes, while the paintings come to life in vivid color, offering Reynolds’ homage to several famous works of art.

When the girl discovers a blank canvas, she doesn’t know what to make of it—“Where is the color? / What does it mean? / It’s the strangest art / I’ve ever seen”—until she closes her eyes and something happens. She begins to see colors, shapes and pictures coloring the canvas in her head. Brightly colored objects outlined in black fill the page, as the blank canvas becomes the girl’s own creation: “It’s mine to fill the way I choose,” she says, as she twirls in a joyous expression of her own creativity.

When the museum closes for the night, the girl walks out with the confident assurance that the museum’s “rhythm exists in all I see.” The book’s final wordless spread perpetuates her lesson, as the girl is seen frolicking in a whimsical and brightly colored landscape reminiscent of “Starry Night.” The endpapers at the beginning of the book show walls covered with framed artwork, while those at the back of the book are filled with empty frames.

For parents who have trouble communicating the excitement of art to their children, The Museum can serve as the starting point for a conversation. The book is also a wonderful reminder of visual art’s power to encourage and empower self-expression. Children and adults will finish this book excited about their next art experience, and perhaps tempted to dance through the halls of a museum in the near future.

Who wouldn’t be afraid of the dark, the mysterious thing that sometimes hides in the closet, sits behind the shower curtain and lives in the basement? Little Laszlo certainly is. Unorthodox children’s author Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events) and equally unconventional, Caldecott Award-winning illustrator Jon Klassen (This Is Not My Hat) team up to dispel Laszlo’s fears in a charmingly creepy picture book, simply titled The Dark.

Every morning Laszlo peeks at the dark in the basement and says hello, hoping that if he visits the dark’s room, maybe it won’t visit his. But one night the dark does visit his bedroom, luring him past the closet and the shower curtain and down the long stairs to the basement. Klassen’s gouache and digitally enhanced illustrations—with a retro design, muted golds from the evening light and an abundance of black—build the suspense and aptly depict Laszlo’s heightened fear.

After poetically explaining the need for closets (where would we keep our shoes, after all?) and shower curtains (we would splash water everywhere!) and even the dark itself (how would we know when we need a lightbulb?), the dark offers Laszlo just what he needs to feel secure again.

By avoiding the saccharine simplicity of many picture books on this topic, Snicket and Klassen reach children at their level, allowing them to explore their fear of the dark and overcome it on their own terms. Just imagine how this pair might handle a fear of hats!