Picture Book Club

If you’re looking for a new children’s book with plenty of whimsy, fantastic art, and a fun rhyming scheme—not to mention something with dancing, polka- playing pigs in it—look no further than Kathi Appelt’s Piggies in a Polka.

The story has a very simple premise: the yearly hootenanny for piggies all over the world is about to take place in one central barn location. Of course, it’s not just a barnyard boogie, or even a simple polka night; it’s also a roundelay, a piggy rigadoon, and even a piggy mosh pit. In short, every musical instrument and style has a place in this fun story.

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Mary Murphy’s The Alphabet Keeper is a delightfully funny story about a woman who keeps the alphabet caged in her home. The trench coat-wearing, angry-looking woman is a unique villain, a far cry from the usual rotund moustached man. Keeping all of her letters caged in the dark under lock and key while she grumbles in her chair, she is very much unlike most other villains I’ve at least ever come across!

One day, as the letter keeper is cleaning out the letters’ cage—very much like a bird cage with an even tighter lack of elbow room—they all escape out the window. Off they go on an adventure, misleading the keeper and taking her on a wild goose chase. The best part of the adventure is that the letters, with their newly found freedom, can add or subtract themselves from anything and change it to something else!

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Kae Nishimura’s I Am Dodo is a humorous children’s picture book that assumes that one dodo did, in fact, survive extinction—because he is so very, very clever—and, after several years of worldly traveling, is now living in New York.

Everyone assumes that he isn’t a dodo because dodo birds are extinct; so he can pretty much do as he likes. However, one professor maintains that there is still a dodo somewhere on Earth and that one day he will find proof. Everyone laughs at him, of course, except for his dog, Spotty. When the professor finally does run into the dodo bird, he is overjoyed and knows he just has to capture it for his long-awaited proof; however, the bird proves to be too clever to catch.

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If you’re looking for a lighthearted, whimsical tale to help teach your children about basic manners, A Cold Winter’s Good Knight by Shelley Moore Thomas might just do the trick. Of all the books we recently checked out this month, it has been my daughter’s favorite—largely due to the antics of three small dragons.

Unlike the fearsome dragons of legend, these are three tiny dragons that like to make snow dragons and igloos. One even has a little monkey doll. Dressed in fleece blankets and caps, they shiver together outside on a cold winter’s night. A kindly good knight hears their teeth chattering and invites them back to the castle, where it is warm and toasty—and where a party is about to ensue. Naturally, the dragons cause a bit of chaos at the king’s big ball.

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