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Toys Come Home: Being the Early Experiences of an Intelligent Stingray, a Brave Buffalo, and a Brand-New Someone Called Plastic
By Emily Jenkins
Illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky
Schwartz & Wade
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-375-86200-7
Ages 5-10
On shelves now

I’m feeling tetchy. Let’s set out some rules when it comes to prequels of children’s books then. Number One: You are allowed to write a prequel if you wrote the original book in the first place. Um . . . . okay, that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. But it’s a good rule in general, don’t you think? Follow that rule and you won’t have to deal with seeing Anne before she came to Green Gables or speculate as to how Captain Hook got to be so mean. Not that every author should consider writing a prequel, mind. I’m sure Harry Potter fans would love to see what capers his parents got up to in school, but then we’d probably have to deal with a How Edward Cullen Became a Vampire novel, and that’s a road I’d rather not tread. All this is to say that if you have to write a prequel to a popular children’s book, it needs to make a certain amount of sense. Fortunately for all of us Toys Come Home makes oodles of caboodles of strudels of noodles of sense. Over the years children have asked Ms. Jenkins how Sheep lost her ear. Now that and a host of other questions (including some remarkably huge ones) are answered at long last.

How do special toys become beloved? Not in the ways you might imagine. StingRay, the stuffed sting ray, arrived too late to be a birthday present at The Girl’s party. Faced with not being The Girl’s favorite present she put up with the insufferable Bobby Dot (a walrus who wasn’t very nice) until after helping rescue the Sheep and facing her fear of towels, she managed to become worthy of snuggling and cuddling on the high bed. Lumphy, the toughy little buffalo, was plucked from a bin full of teddies, proving his valor soon thereafter with a particularly energetic kitten. And Plastic’s sheer energy and curiosity about the world leads the others to ask the ultimate question. Literally. In this way, we get to see how the characters of Toys Go Out and Toy Dance Party came to be who they are.

I have never, in all my live long days, seen an author recall the trauma that comes when a child throws up on their favorite toy better than Ms. Jenkins. It’s sort of a two-part trauma. The first part is the sudden disgusting nature of your once beloved companion and the second is what happens when they go through the wash. Jenkins doesn’t dwell too heavily on the death of toys (just the nature of existence itself, but more on that later) but it’s there and it’s r

The No. 1 Car Spotter
By Atinuke
Illustrated by Warwick Johnson Cadwell
Kane/Miller (a division of EDC Publishing)
$5.99
ISBN: 978-1-61067-051-7
Ages 7-11
On shelves September 1st.

When I discovered the amazing, remarkable, one-of-a-kind, never before seen Anna Hibiscus books by Atinuke last year I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. It just didn’t seem possible. A contemporary early chapter book set on the continent of Africa? To understand how rare this was visit your local library sometime. Ask for fiction about Africa that takes place today for early readers. Specify that you’d rather not take out a work of older fiction that’s deadly serious, but rather something light and fun. And while you’re at it, why don’t you ask for the moon as well since you’re just as likely to get that as what I’ve just described unless it’s Anna Hibiscus (in America anyway). Now Anna is joined by yet another Atinuke character. No. 1 lives in a rural village with his family and friends and his stories, like those of Anna Hibiscus, linger in your brain long after you’ve read them.

Meet No. 1. He’s what you might call a car spotter. If there’s a car driving past his village, you can be sure he’ll not only spot it but identify it and long before anyone else. Life in No. 1’s village isn’t easy, of course. If a cart breaks down then everyone’s got to figure out how to get the produce to the market (it’s No. 1 who comes up with a brilliant solution). If a woman wants to get lipstick at the market she sometimes will have to send a boy (No. 1 ends up doing the right thing entirely by accident then too). If people need chores done they have to rely on the kids (a problem when No. 1 wants to only help the auntie who makes the best food). And if someone gets seriously sick… well, sometimes it’s not always No. 1 who comes up with the solutions to problems. But he’s always around to help out.

I adore Atinuke’s ear for language. This book just begs to be read aloud as you go through it. Pitch perfect bedtime reading fare, that’s what you have here. You get such magnificent lines out of it too. For example, there’s the section where No. 1 aids a single particular mama in the hopes of getting some of her delicious akara. At one point the author just writes, “As I was an able-bodied boy in the vicinity of a shouting mama I started to run around as well.” Something about the construction of that sentence just pleases me to no end. Later No. 1 explains to Coca-Cola that he can’t risk helping him out anymore because he might end up with a name like 7Up. Coca-Cola, visibly upset, points out that his own nickname is from a soft drink. I love No. 1’s method of comforting his friend. “That… is because Coca-Cola is the number one soft drink. Some people prefer Fanta. It is true. And some people prefer Sprite. Some people don’t touch Coca-Cola. But Coca-Cola is still number one.” As pep talks go, I’ve never heard on

Marty McGuire
By Kate Messner
Illustrated by Brian Floca
Scholastic
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-545-14244-1
Ages 5-9
On shelves now

It’s high time “tomboys” rescued their term from its negative connotations. One very rarely runs across parents who use the word with pride. It happens, sure, but more often than not it’s paired with a complaint. Same goes for tomboys in children’s books. They exist but they tend to appear in works of historical fiction more often than not. The contemporary tomboy is, oddly enough, relatively rare these days. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I loved Kate Messner’s Marty McGuire as much as I did. Not only do you have a genuine one-of-a-kind 21st century tomboy on your hands, she’s rejecting the princess culture too! Finding great early chapter books can be an enormous chore. Now Marty makes my job as a children’s librarian that much easier.

Second grade was fine. Marty had no beef with second grade. But for all that her second grade teacher made third grade sound like a bed of roses, Marty is having a rough time of it. Her best friend Annie has been stolen by princess-loving girly girl Veronica Grace and now she won’t go frog hunting or do any of the other fun things she used to with Marty. So when the school play is announced (The Frog Prince) guess who’s shocked and appalled when she ends up with the role of the princess? That’s right. Marty has to be seriously convinced that this is a good plan and even then she’s reluctant. Fortunately, actors always have little tricks to make their roles their own. And Marty has a trick up her sleeve that’s a doozy.

The rise of the princess culture is a relatively recent phenomenon. I’m referring to the abject shameless marketing to little girls of anything and everything princessy. It didn’t really exist when I was a kid, only hitting its stride in the last decade or so. The result in the literary world has been a veritable cornucopia of pink and sparkly princess books for girls of every age. If a girl isn’t into princesses and their omnipresent pinkness they may sometimes find the literary pickings (at least in some bookstores) few. Marty McGuire’s brave rejection of all of that comes as a breath of fresh air. Here we’ve got a girl on the cover reaching for a frog in jeans and sneakers. Pink sneakers, sure, but you go with what you’ve got. The tiara falling to the side seems like more of an afterthought than anything else. I mean clearly this is a different kind of book.

Which makes the story all the more difficult to pull off. In a way, you’re rooting for Marty and her anti-princess stance. The idea of her forced princessing is tricky territory. But Messner somehow manages to walk a fine line, never making this a book about “embracing your inner princess” or similar dreck. Instead, this is very clearly a story about trying something new and making it your own, even if it pulls you out of your comfort zone. That’s actually a very useful, if rare, lesson tha