Picture Book Weekend

This last weekend, I was browsing picture books and I thought I'd recommend a few.

The first is Oh No!: Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World by Mac Barnett  (Hyperion). I love that this book is about a girl whose robot science project acts a little bit like Godzilla. We can all relate to a day gone wrong, right? And I love that this doesn't look quite like every other picture book city out there.

Next, I ran across a new one: Too Purpley! by Jean Reidy and illustrated by Genevieve Leloup (Bloomsbury). Not so far away from the very Fancy Nancy books was this one, which immediately caught my eye. And right away, our young heroine proclaims Not these clothes! For every outfit, she has a reason why it's not quite right, until she finds (and wears!) the perfect thing. At present, my friends who are wee are much more familiar with the emotions in this story than with the ones about being pretty, fancy, or princessy. And I laughed out loud gleefully--and wished I had someone to read it aloud to!

Finally, I stopped to flip through Tuesday by David Weisner (Sandpiper). This isn't a book that I would necessarily have picked up on my own, but I noticed kids gravitating toward it in school libraries years ago; it was one of those books kids of all types would try to find, and then would take off the shelf and hug tightly to their chests so that no other student could poach it before check-out time. Tuesday is a somewhat surreal, beautiful book--with hardly any words at all--and I think that's why it's so attractive (that is, the surreal pictures work even if you can't read). Just when you think the world around you is completely ordinary, big toads start floating around your head. An odd Tuesday, indeed.