Who would have ever thought that trains could be pets? It’s just the sort of thing that childhood dreams are made of, and this clever “guidebook” explains everything starry-eyed train lovers need to know.

Imagine a gentle child’s guidebook on caring for dogs, cats or fish. Now insert the word “train” into the text, and literally tons of fun ensues. A young narrator explains that there are several different types of trains, including monorails, freight trains (which “live in the countryside and travel in herds”) and early steam trains (which “pretty much just sit in museums”).

Jason Carter Eaton, author of The Day My Runny Nose Ran Away, likes to think outside the box, and his latest book is no exception. Before you can train a train, you have to catch one, Eaton notes. Suggested methods include trapping it in a net, running it into quicksand or luring it closer with an offering of coal.

Once caught, what next? Having a pet train isn’t easy, so this guidebook suggests that a calming bath (in a swimming pool) can ease a jittery train’s nerves. The author also advises: “Train your train not to leap up on people and to always wipe its wheels before going indoors.”

Eaton’s fanciful, funny text is perfectly accompanied by John Rocco’s energetic illustrations. Together, this creative team brings their trains to life with names like Smokey, Pushkin, Picklepuss and Sir Chuggsalot.

How to Train a Train is particularly pleasing because it’s never cutesy or cartoonish. Rocco’s trains look real (aside from their subtle eyes and expressions), yet he manages to infuse the hulking locomotives with charm and personality. This book is sure to be a huge hit with young railroad enthusiasts everywhere.

To say the characters in Peter Brown’s new picture book are anthropomorphized is putting it mildly. They’re in clothing, walking upright and living in houses, but they take it even further: They are creatures who have altogether forgotten that they’re animals who can exercise their savageness. These refined, Victorian-esque creatures have abandoned their wild natures. Wanting to have some fun, Mr. Tiger gets to the ground, discovers his additional two legs, sheds his clothes and heads to the wild. Though he enjoys it, he misses his friends and eventually returns, only to discover things are different back home.

Brown reduces scenes to their essentials in these compositions, the digitally-colored artwork initially rendered via India ink, watercolor, gouache and pencil. He effectively establishes mood with his color choices, heightening the book’s story arc and emotional impact. On the opening spread, drab light browns and grays dominate, as we see the dignified creatures (even the monkey) walking stiff and upright down the road, yet Mr. Tiger stands out with his bright orange fur. The spreads get progressively brighter—more greens, more blues, and more light—as he heads to the wilderness.

Brown and his design team have made all kinds of smart choices in Mr. Tiger Goes Wild, a book that celebrates mischief and has a real timelessness to it. For one, he even lets the typeface go wild: When Mr. Tiger is fully free in the wilderness, having discovered his inner beast, we see hand-lettered display type in a huge speech bubble: “ROAR!” Brown also knows where to vary size and use white space to make us care about his main character. The moment Mr. Tiger decides to walk on all four legs, as well as the one where he sheds all his tight clothing and heads to the wilderness, are exuberant occasions when an up-close Mr. Tiger is given the entire spread. The endpapers are also worth discovering: The opening pages display a brick wall, and the final ones show readers a field of grasses.  

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild is an exceptional tribute to the wild and rambunctious energy in all children.

Wild thing, I think I love you.

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 hard to believe that Jacqueline Woodson and James Ransome have not worked together since 2002’s Visiting Day. Both have written many books about African-American experiences and been honored with many of the same awards, in particular the Coretta Scott King Award. Now they have joined forces once more with This Is the Rope, in which Ransome’s rich oil paintings complement Woodson’s gentle story of one family and their move north from South Carolina.

Like so many families before them, this family is heading to better opportunities, but they are forever joined to the South. The story is tied together with the image of an unusual keepsake: a rope that was found “a long time ago, back home in South Carolina.”

The narrator’s grandmother is shown as a little girl, awash in the yellow sky and ground of her childhood. Though she eventually seeks a better place to live during the Great Migration, as a little girl, she is well cared for. Her mother hangs wash on the line, there are chickens in the yard and her home is inviting. Her fuchsia dress bounces as she skips rope. Soon the rope finds new uses: tying luggage down on the roof of a station wagon bound for New York City, hanging flowers for drying, as a clothesline for diapers, pulling a toy duck, and on to the present, where it lives on as a jump rope today.

Ransome’s work adds much to this simple but important story. He includes so many small details that will resonate with grandparents and great-grandparents as they read to their little ones: the dashiki-clad mother with a stroller in New York, the chubby baby in a cloth diaper, the stack of Ebony and Jet magazines, white socks and Converse sneakers, Prince and Keith Haring posters on the wall, the minivan and the large family at a reunion in the park.

No matter how styles might change, one thing remains the same. This is a family with a rich history in love, born in the hot sun of South Carolina and united by memories of one simple artifact: a rope.

Families of all backgrounds will find much to love in Woodson and Ransome’s latest collaboration.

Poor Xander the panda really wants to throw a panda party at the zoo where he lives, but he’s the only panda there. After he decides to invite all the bears instead, he soon comes to realize that Koala is not actually a bear. So, he invites all the mammals, but Rhinoceros won’t attend without the bird who always sits atop his horn. And so it goes until eventually Xander, ever-patient party planner extraordinaire, invites the entire zoo to the big shebang.

Linda Sue Park’s rhyming text rolls right off the tongue, making this one a wonderful read-aloud. It’s hard, I’m sure, to do rhyming picture books well; some are insufferably sing-songy and threaten to put everyone to sleep, but we’re in good hands with Park. There are internal rhymes in many sentence constructions (“Xander planned a bear affair”), as well as rhyming lines (“Xander sat and chewed bamboo. He changed his plans and point of view”). Mixing up her meters and rhythms a bit, Park keeps the story from ever getting dull.

Also delightful are Matt Phelan’s soft ink and watercolor illustrations. Anyone who enjoyed his illustrations for Alice Schertle’s Very Hairy Bear (2007) will be happy to see more Phelan bears here, as well as lots of other creatures. Phelan conveys humor via Xander’s frustration in trying to get this party right—and his immense patience in putting up with all the demands placed upon him.

Park closes with a lengthy author’s note about pandas, their classification, their threat of extinction and more. She even throws in a note about the oxpecker, a bird with a symbiotic relationship to rhinos, which explains our grumpy yet devoted rhino.

This is a sweet and tender story about true blue friends. Don’t miss the party.

Observant child versus oblivious adult: It’s a classic contrast. In Kathy Stinson’s delightful new picture book, The Man with the Violin, the opposition serves as the basis for the story of a mom-in-a-hurry who hears but doesn’t listen and her curious, receptive son—a little boy named Dylan, who’s wise beyond his years and in tune with the world, as sensitive to his surroundings as, well, a violin.

On a winter day, as mother and son make their way through a crowded metro station, Dylan’s attention is arrested by the sound of music. Its source: a nondescript man with a violin who plays with his eyes closed, clearly transported by the tune that issues from his instrument. The sound “makes Dylan’s skin hu-u-mmm,” and he, too, is transported. In one picture, he floats in mid-air, lifted by the song’s power—and surrounded by puzzled onlookers. Dylan wants to linger and listen. He begs his mother to stop, but she refuses. She sweeps Dylan onto an escalator and away.

Later, at home, the unimaginable occurs: Dylan hears the same tune on the radio. When he learns the truth about the man responsible for it, he’s ecstatic. His mother soon realizes that she should’ve taken Dylan’s advice and opened her ears. Together, they share a musical moment in the kitchen—a sweet note for the story’s end.

Stinson’s lovely book was inspired by an anonymous performance given by renowned violinist Joshua Bell in a Washington, D.C., subway station in 2007. Almost all of the busy rush-hour passengers ignored the violinist’s beautiful music—except for the children. As the Washington Post reported, “Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.

Bell himself contributes a postscript to The Man with the Violin, bringing the story full circle.

Dušan Petri?i?’s fanciful illustrations play up the contrast between kid and adult. He portrays the metro as a gray point of transit teeming with intent, focused grown-ups and filled with white noise—a symphony of meaningless sound that takes the shape of jagged, zig-zag lines and spiky lightning bolts. This cacophony literally hangs in the air and competes with the violinist, whose music Petri?i? depicts as a cascading ribbon of color. 

There’s plenty to ponder in this melodious tale. It’s a story that’s bound to get kids thinking—about the importance of listening. And, of course, the power of music.

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.