Here is a list of kids book reviews for May 2013, by our friends at Green Bean Books in Portland, OR. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Please comment with YOUR favorite books for May 2013!
Mommy! Mommy! by Taro Gomi (BB, $6.99)
We’ve long cherished Bus Stop, My Friends, and the world’s all-time super cutest potty book Everybody Poops! This spring, illustrious Japanese illustrator and author Taro Gomi offers us a cheepy, chirpy, pair of lost little chicks looking for Mama Hen! These big-eyed yellow paint splotches with beaks hop around the page and the barnyard in that one-and-only-Gomi way we love so much!
Dream Friends by You Byun (HC, $16.99)
Melody’s dream friend is a fluffy white cat the size of a dragon who takes her on nightrides through cupcake-filled skies! Inseparable while Melody sleeps, the two play hide-and-seek in an enchanted hat-tree forest, dive for pearls together, and even share a secret swirl dance! Melody wishes her cat comrade could follow her to school, where she feels especially shy. Dreamcats, alas, are fated to remain in dreamland. Will Melody muster the confidence to share her swirl dance with a real-life daytime friend? You Byun’s illustrations feel like hopping inside a sorbet sundae!
Cookie the Walker by Chris Monroe (HC $16.95)
From the author of the inimitable Monkey with a Toolbelt series–a Green Bean favorite–comes the chronicle of a precocious little pup climbing the ladder of success! Cookie’s awe-inspiring ability to walk on two legs earns her oodles of fame and a fortune in treats! Cookie stars in a dog fair, tours with a circus, and even lands her own reality TV spectacular. Despite the goodies and glory, Cookie starts to miss the fluffy towel feeling of home sweet home. Will Cookie find the guts to stand down and return to la vie quotidienne with her ordinary but never boring best buddy Kevin? Monroe fills her words and pictures with loopy jokes that kids and grownups both slap knees over!
Destiny, Rewritten by Kathryn Fitzmaurice (HC $16.99)
Emily’s English professor mom is sure she’s fated to become a great and powerful poet! She’s even named after the famous 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson! But modern-day, eleven-year-old Emily Elizabeth Davis doesn’t even GET poems and has never written a single real one in her life! After accidentally donating an important document containing the yet-undiscovered secret to her own past to Goodwill, Emily goes on a quest, romping through book stores and thrift shops to redo her destiny. This middle reader is THE book for the book-lover in your life! Fitzmaurice’s dialogue is spot on and her story is full of smart, spunky girls–and boys!
