Some like little white dogs or big black cats or hoppy brown bunnies best. Others prefer squishy snails or tall giraffes or sleek black panthers. With beautiful illustrations and charming personal stories, 14 children's book artists share their favorite animals and why they love them.

    A hat is a pocket for your hair, and a seat is a pocket called a chair... A Sock Is a Pocket for Your Toes: A Pocket Book is a whimsical pocket full of bells and balloons, ice cream and mud, giggles and hugs. Elizabeth Garton Scanlon's delightful verse is captured in Robin Preiss Glasser's energetic artwork, which follows four families through a busy day exploring the surprising ins and outs of the world's pockets. This special book will leave readers young and old with pockets full of joy!

    Iggy has one passion: building. His parents are proud of his fabulous creations, though they’re sometimes surprised by his materials—who could forget the tower he built of dirty diapers? When his second-grade teacher declares her dislike of architecture, Iggy faces a challenge. He loves building too much to give it up! With Andrea Beaty’s irresistible rhyming text and David Roberts’s puckish illustrations, this book will charm creative kids everywhere, and amuse their sometimes bewildered parents.  Also from the powerhouse author-illustrator team of Iggy Peck, Architect, is Rosie Revere, Engineer, a charming, witty picture book about believing in yourself and pursuing your passion. Ada Twist, Scientist, the companion picture book featuring the next kid from Iggy Peck's class, is available in September 2016.

    Lay on a BIG spidey smoocheroo.b. Smile, but back away slowly.c. Grab the closest object, wind up, and let it fly.d. Run away screaming.If you chose b, c, or d, then this book is for you! (If you chose a, you might be crazy.)I'm Trying to Love Spiders will help you see these amazing arachnids in a whole new light, from their awesomely excessive eight eyes, to the seventy-five pounds of bugs a spider can eat in a single year! And you're sure to feel better knowing you have a better chance of being struck by lightning than being fatally bit by a spider. Comforting, right? No? Either way, there's heaps more information in here to help you forget your fears . . . or at least laugh a lot!

    David Elliott and Becca Stadtlander bestow a sense of wonder onto such common birdfeeder visitors as the sparrow, the crow, and the cardinal and capture the exotic beauty of far-flung fowl like the Andean condor, the Australian pelican, and the Caribbean flamingo. Concise, clever verse from an award-winning author pairs with striking artwork from a debut illustrator to make this a true pleasure for anyone who loves birds.

    Lots of other animals grunt too… Barks, grunts, squeals—animals make all kinds of sounds to communicate and express themselves. With a growling salamander and a whining porcupine, bellowing giraffes and laughing gorillas, this boisterous book is chock-full of fun and interesting facts and is sure to be a favorite of even the youngest animal enthusiasts.

    In her newest book, Caldecott and Geisel Honor Book author Laura Vaccaro Seeger fashions an homage to a single color and, in doing so, creates a book that will delight and, quite possibly astonish you. Green is a Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Book of 2012

    

    But books are only smears of ink without the reader’s mind to give their letters meaning and bring them to life. With a rollicking, rhyming text and delightful artwork, poet and storyteller Allan Wolf and illustrator Brianne Farley remind us that books, no matter how they may be consumed, give readers of every background an opportunity to expand their world and spark their imagination. With infectious enthusiasm, No Buddy Like a Book offers an ode to the wonders of language—written, spoken, and everything in between.

    This book uses playful rhyming text to explore these numerical sets in vibrant detail, ending with the stars in the sky—a number set too big to count!

    But under the snow exists a secret kingdom of squirrels and snow hares, bears and bullfrogs, and many other animals that live through the winter safe and warm, awake and busy, under the snow. Discover the wonder and activity that lies beneath winter's snowy landscape in this magical book.

    A little girl gallivants through a county fair, searching for her furry friend. Readers will surely spot the friendly monster as well as twenty shapes, identified here by their proper names—trapezoids, ellipses, kites, and more—hidden among iconic fair attractions from the fun house to the Ferris wheel. Maybe the monster is judging the pies? Or perhaps he’s at the monster-truck rally? Youngsters will be so mesmerized by Steve Light’s masterful pen-and-ink illustrations, decorated with vivid splashes of color, they won’t even realize they’ve learned how to spot a nonagon while looking for a monster.

    One child experiences a flower with all five senses—from its color to its fragrance to the entire universe it evokes—revealing how a single flower can expand one's perspective in many ways.

    Rhyming verse carries the brief story, while wonderful, warm, full-color illustrations present scenes from novel angles, and depict a loving family with a sense of intimacy, sincerity, and joy.”—School Library Journal

    But foxes are sneaky, and it proves more difficult than she thought.Nilah Magruder's debut picture book charmingly tells the story of what it means to not give up and how sometimes what you're looking for is closer than you think.