He gathers things in jars--ordinary things like buttercups, feathers, and heart-shaped stones. Then he meets another rabbit, Evelyn, and together they begin to collect extraordinary things--like rainbows, the sound of the ocean, and the wind just before snow falls. And, best of all, when they hold the jars and peer inside, they remember all the wonderful things they've seen and done. But one day, Evelyn has sad news: Her family is moving away. How can the two friends continue their magical collection--and their special friendship--from afar?

    He scribbles in books. He steals candy from baby unicorns. He even burps in church. Seriously, who does that? Dragon, that's who. The king, the knights, and the villagers are desperate to take down this beast once and for all. But sometimes it's up to the unlikeliest of heroes to tame a dragon this terrible.

    Thankfully, the bestselling duo of author Laura Numeroff and illustrator Felicia Bond -- creators of If You Take a Mouse to the Movies and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie -- have teamed up to show us the hijinks a whiskered school guest could cause.Starting with asking for your lunchbox, this critter is set for mischief. The feisty mouse asks for a snack for later (cookies of course), a notebook, and pencils, and wants "to share your backpack, too." After he arrives at school, the pushy classmate tries his hand (make that paw) at math and writing on the blackboard, afterward whipping up a messy, pink science experiment and building a "little mouse house" from blocks. The schooltime antics don't stop there, but a busy mouse tends to get hungry after so much playtime. Naturally his snack is in the lunchbox, which is stored "in a safe place" with his new picture book inside.Following the whimsical style of their previous books, Numeroff and Bond have done it again. Their high-adrenaline mouse will have readers cheering while their eyes comb the illustrations for extra nibbles of fun. Although the book's main human character looks positively exhausted at the end, we can only holler for more of the little guy with the huge school spirit. Matt Warner

    . . the school.

    He is so big he can't fit inside his book! Luckily, Ernest is also a very determined moose, and he and his little chipmunk friend aren't going to give up easily. With some tape, odd bits of paper, and plenty of enthusiasm, the pair constructs an enormous gatefold page by themselves, and everything fits together in the end.

    A small boy and his elephant play an absurd game of hide and seek - a brilliant debut from a Sebastian Walker Award-winning illustrator

     When a young girl brings her beloved stuffed fox to the playground, much to her astonishment, a real fox takes off with it! The girl chases the fox into the woods with her friend, the boy, following close behind, but soon the two children lose track of the fox. Wandering deeper and deeper into the forest, they come across a tall hedge with an archway. What do they find on the other side? A marvelous village of miniature stone cottages, tiny treehouses, and, most extraordinary of all, woodland creatures of every shape and size. But where is the little fox? And how will they find him?

    But when the helpers disappear too, Bella realizes it will take more than a tug on the leash to put things right. Cleverly using the physicality of the book, This book just ate my dog! is inventive, ingenious, and just pure kid-friendly fun!

    "Hello, Penguin!" he says. "What shall we play?" But Penguin says nothing. Even when Ben tickles its belly, sings a funny song, does a dizzy dance, stands on his head, sticks out his tongue, and resorts to increasingly rude and drastic measures, Penguin makes no response. What will it take for Penguin to say something — or for Ben to understand what Penguin has to say? Fresh, spare illustrations bring whimsy to this wonderful tale, in which a silent Penguin turns marvelously eloquent and a little boy finally gets his heart’s desire.

    Messy hair? Beaver breath? So what! Here's a little girl who knows what really matters.At once silly and serious, Karen Beaumont's joyous rhyming text and David Catrow's wild illustrations unite in a book that is sassy, soulful--and straight from the heart.About the Author:KAREN BEAUMONT's picture books include Being Friends, illustrated by Joy Allen, and Louella Mae, She's Run Away!, illustrated by Rosanne Litzinger. She lives in Capitola, California.DAVID CATROW is a political cartoonist and the illustrator of many popular books for children, including the Book Sense 76 Top Ten selection Don't Take Your Snake for a Stroll by Karin Ireland. He lives in Springfield, Ohio.

    Little Louie's story keeps getting messed up, and he's not happy about it! What's the point of telling his tale if he can't tell it perfectly? But when he stops and takes a deep breath, he realizes that everything is actually just fine, and his story is a good one--imperfections and all.

    Using his brilliant collage technique, Mr. Carle creates a world both childlike and touching in its poignant simplicity.

    He wanted a different kind of pet — one that could run and catch, or chase string and climb trees, a soft furry pet to sleep on his bed at night. Definitely not Norman. But when he tries to trade Norman for a "good pet," things don’t go as he planned. Could it be that Norman is a better pet than he thought? With wry humor and lighthearted affection, author Kelly Bennett and illustrator Noah Z. Jones tell an unexpected — and positively fishy — tale about finding the good in something you didn’t knowyou wanted.

    Sure, he may have paws and whiskers. And his quacks might sound more like…well, meows, but he lives among ducks, everyone he knows is a duck, and he’s happy.Then Quackers meets another duck who looks like him (& talks like him, too!)—but he calls himself a cat. So silly!Quackers loves being among his new friends the cats, but he also misses his duck friends, and so he finds a way to combine the best of both worlds. Part cat, part duck, all Quackers!

    Full of vibrant and playful illustrations and hilariously absurd logic, kids will want to read it again and again.Could there be anything worse for Giraffe? Maybe being sat on by a skunk or smooshed by two hapless hippos, or worst of all—cornered by a hungry lion? No one seems to notice that Giraffe is not standing around just to be sat upon. Will he be able to find his voice and make his friends realize who he really is?