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Mattland, story by Hazel Hutchins and Gail Herbert, art by Dušan Petričić

What's different about Mattland?

Well, first, there's the cover. Drawn from Matt's point of view, all we see is the muddy ground and the kid's arm holding a stick. There's something a little more intimate, maybe something a little reminiscent of an introspective grownup graphic novel about that cover.

Then there's the fact that we never really get a good look at Matt. We see his shadow, his reflection, his feet or legs or arms, all drawn from his point of view... and yet the book is written in the third person. Gives the book a cinematic quality - a European cinematic quality, to be precise.

Not to forget the text: Matt has moved into a pretty drab-looking neighborhood, and when he goes outside to play, he finds mud and rocks and a stick. Wow. But he starts creating a landscape out of the bits of junk he finds, and as he does so he talks to himself, just a little, naming things. The narrative, and his landscape, gather mass and momentum, and by the end of the book he has attracted the attention of the kids that you just know are going to be his friends.

Not goopy. Not sticky. But not ignoring Matt's emotions either, Mattland is a true-to-its-core portrait of a boy, a vacant lot, and his imagination.

Peg Leg Peke by Brie Spangler
Oh my gosh! A boo-boo! A broken leg! Well then, let's see if we can distract you from your sorrow... and that's exactly what the author does when she meets this sweetie little toddler Pekingese. A good book to have on hand when the kid goes facefirst skidding into the concrete, or had to have a splinter out, or got stung by a bee.

The Secret Olivia Told Me by N. Joy, illustrations by Nancy Devard
Here's another book that must have crept right past me. A simple story about gossip and trust, it is brilliantly illustrated in black and white silhouettes, with a transparent red balloon representing the secret.

An excellent book to have on hand when some hurtful rumor runs rampant through 2nd grade. And I will be looking for more from Nancy Devard - those silhouettes are full of personality and life. Using this old, old technique, she has captured gesture and attitude to give us the very kids I see in the children's section every day.

The Littlest Dinosaur by Michael Foreman
Michael Foreman has had a long and impressive career. He creates beautiful watercolors and sometimes writes wonderful books.

A parent picked up The Littlest Dinosaur tonight at work, saying, "Oh, my son loves dinosaurs". I looked at the cover illustration, a pensive, wee ceratopsid sitting atop a blue hill, gazing into the blue evening sky, and I thought to myself, "I bet that book isn't about dinosaurs. I bet that book Teaches Us Something About Ourselves." Something about all that blue. And now, oh, you stop it. I do NOT dislike ALL books with a message right off the bat. If a book charms me, I don't care what it's trying to tell me.

So we have a loving mama dinosaur who hatches a clutch of eggs. All but one egg, which mama guards with obsessive care. Eventually, papa dinosaur, tired of taking care of all the other kids while she fusses over the egg, puts his face down next to it and yells, "Do something!" Whereupon the egg cracks. My colleague Dances With Chickens was reading the book with me. I turned to her and said, "Look, yelling at your kids really does work!" We turned the page and from the egg emerged the tiniest dinosaur ever seen. Dances With Chickens observed, "Yeah, but you get less out of them."

So tiny dinosaur lives a lonely, perilous life among his giant family... until! One day everyone else gets stuck in the mud and he has to go for help, enlisting a humongous longneck, who plucks the ceratopsid family from the muck. "I thought I was too big and clumsy to do anything useful," he said, "but now I know that's not true."

Me? I suppose I'm too tired and cynical to do anything useful. When I saw those dinos in the mud, I had been hoping for some La Brea sabertooth action. MmmROWR!

Sergio Makes a Splash! by Edel Rodriguez

The cutest penguin since Polly Dunbar's Penguin and Jean-Luc Fromental's 365 Penguins is Sergio, an Argentine soccer fan who is afraid to learn to swim, in this funny funny book by the gifted illustrator of Float Like a Butterfly and Oye, Celia!.

Gifted? Oh yeah. Three colors: cyan, orange, and navy. Woodblock illustration, which yields that luscious porous texture and sticky edge. And what does it say about the design of a book when a two-page spread of blank blue ocean, textureless white sky, and an orange sun the size of a pea is not only interesting but suspenseful as well?

Adult gift alert: nice for anyone embarking on a new career or life change. "Great, next time we'll swim without the floaties!".

Harriet Dancing by Ruth Symes, illustrated by Caroline Jayne Church

Hooray for Harriet!

Her turn-ons include: strawberries, worms, her fuzzy little friends, and dancing

Turn-offs: snotty butterflies

What a riot! A picture book in which the beautiful fluttery butterflies are the mean snobby jerks. They make poor hedgehog Harriet cry when they refuse to dance with her. She tells her friend Ivor, also a hedgehog, and they have their own dance party, which soon becomes so fun and unhinged that the butterflies ask to join in. Which Harriet, ever gracious, allows.

Not so tall for six by Dianna Hutts Aston, illustrated by Frank W. Dormer
Dianna Hutts Aston is the author who brought us the gorgeous and informativeAn Egg Is Quiet and A Seed Is Sleepy. Not so tall for six is not like those books - I should get that out of the way.

Kylie Bell is the not-so-tallest kid in first grade. Generally, she doesn't let her size get her down, but a new large bully-type boy in her class is not letting her forget it.

Kylie deals with the (mild) bullying by thinking about her family forebears: polite Great-great Grandmother, fast Big Brother, brave Great-uncle. Her decency and courage win the day. This is a sweet, kicky book with Southwestern details and scenery - just right for a shrimpy kid with a big heart.

A Day with dad by Bo R. Holmberg, illustrated by Eva Eriksson
Non-custodial father spends the day with his son. Snif.

Often, books like this one, written for a specific audience and/or for a specific purpose, are less well-written, or the illustrations are sort of at a lower standard, than picture books that are "just" written for fun. I am happy to report that the semi-hipster dad and eager little boy in A Day With Dad are sensitively drawn in toothy colored pencil, and the text relates their day together (hot dogs, movie, pizza, library, pastry) in a simple, joyful way, without getting bogged down in the history and mechanics of their present relationship.

I did notice, however, that at the end of the visit, when the boy is waving to his dad from the train platform, Mom keeps her hands in her pockets. I have a feeling she's gonna need a strong one tonight while Tim tells her all about his wonderful day eating junk food with wonderful Dad.

My Travelin' Eye by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw
Wow. There's a lot to look at in this book.

Little Jenny Sue, who was born with a "lazy eye," apparently grew up, went to art school, and started collecting paper, because her collages are about 147 kinds of awesome! She can draw, too, and she tells her story, of appreciating her two different eyes as different sides of her personality, then of having the "lazy" eye strengthened and how her mom helped her through the process, in an entertaining and heartfelt way.

So what we have here is a spectacular book about strabismus and ambylopia. Not exactly a storytime book, but certainly a read-aloud in the school setting. I would say that "lazy eye" could stand in for any difference that is experiential in nature, such as hearing deficit, Asperger's syndrome, even dyslexia.

My Travelin' Eye is food for thought.

Bugs in my hair?! by Catherine Stier, illustrated by Tammie Lyon
Well, if you need a head lice book - and what school doesn't? - this is definitely the one to buy.

Ellie LaFleur is one of those perfect little girls, with cute outfits and shiny hair and a beautiful mom... and if it can happen to Ellie, it can happen to anyone.

Jaunty watercolor illustrations and straightforward, realistic text make this book relatable, informative, and actually kind of interesting. At the end, Ellie makes her own information sheet about lice just for kids, with lots of color and good advice.

The Summer Reading Club theme for this summer is Buggy About Reading, so when we first spotted this book, we were happy to have another bug book to recommend. Then we realized it was a "difficult themes" book about head lice. Oh well. But now that I've read it, I don't know - I might recommend it as a fun Summer Reading book anyway!

In a Blue Room by Jim Averbeck, illustrated by Tricia Tusa
Tricia Tusa is one of those illustrators with a wonderful, gestural style, whose work I always feel like I've seen before. Her Alice reminds me of the little girl in How to Make a Ni...oops yes well that's because Tricia Tusa illustrated How to Make a Night. Well that was a good night-time book too. Maybe somebody's pigeonholed Tricia Tusa as a go-to-bed illustrator. Weirder things have happened. Eric Carle has his own museum.

In this book, Alice says she can only sleep in a blue room. Her Mama (a very patient, loving mama, by the way) brings her four items to soothe her senses: flowers, tea, a soft quilt, and a windchime, and then, as Alice is finally just barely hanging on to consciousness, she turns off the light and the room is bathed in blue moonlight. The last pages show Alice's house on the Earth and the Earth in space, in a celestial "blue room".

You want to get some sleep? I'm telling you - this is one sweet, soothing big blue marble glass of warm milk.

Poor Matilda Rose. She's a kissy little girl - she kisses everyone all the time, but this morning, she has lost her kisses, and Daddy's coming home today, and what will she do when she sees him?

It's kind of a weird idea, but I think I get it. It's either "just" silly and affectionate, or it's for a child dealing with a parent's absence and feeling unsure about that parent's return.

The art is very nice and quite unusual: a cartoony style executed in shaded black and white pencil, with lovely spots of soft but vivid color.

Jake Stays Awake. It's a cutie problem solver, and we love to see those. Problem: Kid sleeps in parents' bed every night.
Solution: Family tries all kinds of different places to sleep together, all of them uncomfortable, until kid realizes his own bed might be much better.

Practical solution? No. But that's not what you look for in these books. You're trying to start a dialog with the kid in an nonconfrontational, hopefully silly way.

Is good.

Author: Campbell Geeslin
Illustrator: Ryan Sanchez
Published: Schwartz & Wade (on JOMB)
ISBN: 0375836136 Chapters.ca Amazon.com

Luminous with colour, character and unusual details, this simple story of step family shuffling reminds us that working to understand another can sometimes help us understand ourselves.

More art and artists on JOMB:

• Emma’s Rug
• Victor and Christabel
• I Want A Dog