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Oct 15, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Adrienne L. Pettinelli |Dean Schneider |Julie Roach |Christina Dorr
Dalmartian: A Mars Rover Story, written and illustrated by Lucy Ruth Cummins, has the same setup as the film E.T.: a crew of alien botanists is interrupted while collecting samples, and in the rush to escape, one of their number is left behind. In this case, though, the aliens look like dogs and are white with lime green markings. A boy, Stephen, finds the stranded alien, and the interactions between him and his “guest” are played for wry humor.
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Oct 10, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Dean Schneider |Julie Roach |Christina Dorr |Adrienne L. Pettinelli
Adrienne Pettinelli captured the heart of Kevin Henkes’s work in her Horn Book review of his picture book The World and Everything in It (May/June 2023): “Henkes’s strength is in the poetry of the everyday and finding the profound in ordinary moments.” Finding Things, written by Henkes and illustrated by his wife, Laura Dronzek, focuses on just a portion of the greater world — a ball, a flower, a box, and a kitten.
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Oct 8, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Julie Roach |Christina Dorr |Adrienne L. Pettinelli |Shelley Isaacson
Under cheerfully intrepid cover art, Aaron Becker’s wordless picture book opens onto quite a mood with a wash of watercolors in gloomy grays and blues. Intricate scratchy lines depict a scene of old, crumbly stone buildings from who-knows-what era rising out of standing water. Isolated on various high points of ground are animals: giraffes on one, elephants on another, and tigers on still another. Towering over them all stands an enormous yellow robot caring for the creatures.
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Oct 3, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Christina Dorr |Adrienne L. Pettinelli |Shelley Isaacson |Julie Hakim Azzam
A picture book is a whole package, every square inch valuable real estate. And Susanna Chapman, illustrator of The Fastest Drummer: Clap Your Hands for Viola Smith!, wastes none of that real estate as she lays the land for author Dean Robbins’s spare lyrical text. Together both text and art reveal Viola’s passion, intensity, and musicality.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Sadaf Siddique |Patrick Gall |Christina Dorr |Jessica Agudelo
Look! Look! by Uma Krishnaswami; illus. by Uma KrishnaswamyPrimary Groundwood 32 pp. 4/24 9781773069326 $19.99e-book ed. 9781773069333 $16.99A young girl passes by an unremarkable patch of ground on her way to and from school.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Jessica Agudelo |Patrick Gall |Christina Dorr
Emergency Quarters by Carlos Matias; illus. by Gracey ZhangPrimary Tegen/HarperCollins 40 pp. 5/24 9780063271456 $19.99It’s a new school year, and Ernesto, an Afro Dominican boy wearing “lucky kicks” and “his favorite Mets cap,” is finally allowed to walk the six blocks to school without his parents. Before he leaves, his mom hands him a shiny quarter “for emergencies”—to call home using a pay phone if he needs to.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Christina Dorr |Patrick Gall |Jessica Agudelo
The Yellow Bus by Loren Long; illus. by the authorPrimary Roaring Brook 48 pp. 6/24 9781250903136 $19.99e-book 9781250368034 $11.99Long’s poignant picture book about a school bus is a meditation on the passage of time while finding purpose in all seasons of life, in the tradition of Virginia Lee Burton. “There was once a bright yellow bus who spent her days driving” passengers (first school children, then elderly people) “from one important place to another.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Hill Saxton |Patrick Gall |Christina Dorr |Jessica Agudelo
Touch the Sky by Stephanie V. W. Lucianovic; illus. by Chris ParkPreschool, Primary Carolrhoda 32 pp. 5/24 9781728460451 $18.99Vern dreams of soaring through the air on the playground swings. If only he could learn to pump his legs! While well-versed in other swinging activities, such as the wind-up and spin-out and belly-down, none gives Vern that feeling of flying. Other kids make it look so easy, while Vern thrashes this way and that trying for takeoff.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Patrick Gall |Christina Dorr |Jessica Agudelo
Heatwave by Lauren Redniss; illus. by the authorPreschool, Primary Random House Studio/Random 40 pp. 5/24 9780593645949 $19.99Library ed. 9780593645956 $22.99e-book ed. 9780593645963 $10.99Redniss’s assured, measured, and elegant meditation on life during our current environmental crisis begins during a record-breaking heatwave with a crystal-clear proclamation: “No way.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Nicholl Denice Montgomery |Patrick Gall |Christina Dorr |Jessica Agudelo
A Family Tree by Staci Lola Drouillard; illus. by Kate GardinerPrimary Clarion/HarperCollins 40 pp. 5/24 9780063242463 $19.99When Francis’s family plants Gaawaandagoonce (“little spruce” in Ojibwemowin) in her grandmother’s garden located alongside Gichigamiing (Lake Superior), the tree and baby Francis are almost the same height.
