New Picture Books

Lucky Jake - Sharon Hart Addy
While panning for gold with his Pa, Jake adopts a pig that he names Dog.

Fox - Kate Banks
A baby fox anticipates the time when he can go out alone, but first his parents must teach him the ways of the wilderness.

A Perfect Day - Remy Charlip
A parent and child spend a perfect day together, from sunrise to nightfall.

First Grade, Here I Come - Nancy Carlson
Henry tells his mother that he did not like his first day of first grade, but as he describes what he did and learned, he begins to realize that he might enjoy it after all.


That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown - Cressida Cowell
Emily defends her stuffed rabbit from the naughty queen who is determined to acquire it any way she can.

Orange Pear Apple Bear - Emily Gravett
Explores concepts of color, shape, and food using only five simple words, as a bear juggles and plays.

Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy - Jane O'Connor
Nancy wants to adopt a special puppy so that she is no longer the only fancy member of her family, but after a day of puppysitting a papillon, she realizes that being fancy is not always the most important thing.

17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore - Jenny Offill
A young girl lists the seventeen things she is not allowed to do anymore, including not being able to make ice after freezing a fly in one of the cubes.

Shelly - Margie Palatini
Shelly's older sisters wait impatiently for him to be ready for all sorts of activities, like they are, but he is determined to do things on his own schedule.

The Purple Balloon - Chris Raschka
Easy-to-read text reveals that dying is hard work, for the old and especially the young, and how good it is that so many people help when a person dies, from medical staff to clergy and friends to family members.

Little Moon Dog - Helen Ward
Little Moon Dog plays with the mischievous fairies who come to tour the moon, but he later realizes that the Man in the Moon is his true friend.

Scaredy Squirrel - Melanie Watt
Meet Scaredy Squirrel, a squirrel who never leaves his nut tree because he's afraid of the unknown "out there." But then, something unexpected happens that may just change his outlook.

How to Bake an American Pie - Karma Wilson
Rhyming text and illustrations present a recipe for how to bake a pie from all the things that make America great.

The 39 Apartments of Ludwig van Beethoven - Jonah Winter
Ludwig van Beethoven and his five legless pianos keep having to move from one apartment to another when his neighbors complain about the noise.

The Little Red Fish - Taeeun Yoo
A little boy named JeJe explores a magical library with his friend, a little red fish.

New Children's Books

Dimity Dumpty: The Story of Humpty's Little Sister - Bob Graham
Humpty Dumpty's little sister is too shy to be part of her family's circus act, but she finds courage when her brother needs her help.

The Story of Giraffe - Guido Pigni
After learning that he cannot board Noah's ark until he finds a girl giraffe to go with him, Giraffe asks other creatures for help but, while they teach him valuable lessons, none can help with the main problem.

New Professional Resources

Lessons for Extending Place Value - Maryann Wickett

Acting Out: Reader's Theatre Across the Curriculum - Chris Gustafson

New Christian Education Resource

Crafts from Your Favorite Bible Stories - Kathy Ross
Presents instructions for making twenty-nine craft projects related to Bible stories and characters including a Jonah in the whale puppet, a cardboard tube manger, and a hair-growing Samson.

New Spanish Books

From the series Que hay dentro de mi? by Dana Meachen Rau

Los pulmones
A closer look at the lungs and how they work with the respirtory system to help bring oxygen into the body.

El estomago
A closer look at the stomach and how it works with the digestive system to give the body the nutrients it needs to stay healthy.

La piel
A closer look at skin and how it protects the body.

El corazon y la sangre
A closer look at the heart and blood and how they work together to carry oxygen and nutrients to other parts of the body.

Huesos y musculos
A closer look at the body's bones and muscles and how they work together.

New Nonfiction Books

Opposites Attract: Magnetism - Steve Parker
Describes what magnetism and magnetic fields are, how they work, and various ways that magnetism is used.

The Pathfinder Mission to Mars - John Hamilton
Describes the Mars Pathfinder project, in which a vehicle has landed on Mars to investigate the surface of the planet and send back data on Martian geology.

Magnetism - Sally M. Walker
A simple introduction to magnets and magnetism.

New YA Book

Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Jeff Kinney
Greg records his sixth grade experiences in a middle school where he and his best friend, Rowley, undersized weaklings amid boys who need to shave twice daily, hope just to survive, but when Rowley grows more popular, Greg must take drastic measures to save their friendship.

New YA Books

The Red Shoe - Ursula Dubosarsky
Three sisters growing up in post-World War II Sydney, Australia, deal with their mentally unstable father, their possibly unfaithful mother, and the defecting Russian spy who lives next door.



Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree - Lauren Tarshis
A quirky and utterly logical seventh-grade girl named Emma-Jean Lazarus discovers some interesting results when she gets involved in the messy everyday problems of her peers.

Peak - Roland Smith
A fourteen-year-old boy attempts to be the youngest person to reach the top of Mount Everest.



Feathers - Jacqueline Woodson
When a new, white student nicknamed "The Jesus Boy" joins her sixth grade class in the winter of 1971, Frannie's growing friendship with him makes her start to see some things in a new light.

Dragon's Keep - Janet Lee Carey
In 1145 A.D., as foretold by Merlin, fourteen-year-old Rosalind, who will be the twenty-first Pendragon Queen of Wilde Island, has much to accomplish to fulfill her destiny, while hiding from her people the dragon's claw she was born with that reflects only one of her mother's dark secrets.

Graphic Novel

Bumperboy and the Loud, Loud Mountain - Debbie Huey
Bumberboy and his best pal Bumperpup journey to a mysterious and deserted land where Bumperboy discovers the secrets that lie behind the talking mountain.

New Picture Books

The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County - Janice N. Harrinton
A young farm girl tries to catch her favorite chicken, until she learns something about the hen that makes her change her ways. Meet one smart chicken chaser. She can catch any chicken on her grandmother's farm except one - the elusive Miss Hen. In a hilarious battle of wits, the spirited narrator regales readers with her campaign to catch Miss Hen, but this chicken is "fast as a mosquito buzzing and quick as a fleabite." Our chicken chaser has her mind set on winning, until she discovers that sometimes it's just as satisfying not to catch chickens as it is to catch them.

I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean - Kevin Sherry
A giant squid brags about being bigger than everything else in the ocean--almost.

Dogs and Cats - Steve Jenkins
Two related works, one about dogs with some comparisons to cats and one about cats with some comparisons to dogs.

Wolf! Wolf! - John Rocco
A crafty old wolf finds a peaceful way to satisfy his hunger in this alternate version of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," told from the wolf's point of view and set in Asia.

Duck, Duck, Goose - Tad Hills
Duck and Goose face a challenge to their friendship when an enthusiastic young duck moves into their neighborhood who wants to play--and win--all sorts of games.

Animal Poems - Valerie Worth
Twenty-three poems in a posthumous collection by Valerie Worth distinguishes one animal from all other creatures and captures it in all of its wonderful singularity - from wasp to snake to wren.

Rainstorm - Barbara Lehman
In this wordless picture book, a boy finds a mysterious key which leads him on an adventure one rainy day.

The Purple Balloon - Chris Raschka
Easy-to-read text reveals that dying is hard work, for the old and especially the young, and how good it is that so many people help when a person dies, from medical staff to clergy and friends to family members.

Nobody Gonna Turn Me 'Round - Doreen Rappaport
Chronicling the struggles of the black civil rights movement from the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott up until the 1965 Voting Rights Bill, this anthology weaves together songs, poems, memoirs, letters and court testimonies of those active in the movement, along with a meticulously researched historical narrative. It tells the stories of as yet uncelebrated heroes, alongside more familiar figures like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks and creates a powerful and moving account of what it means to be free - and what it is to be human.

New Nonfiction Books

The Declaration of Independence - Judith Lloyd Yero
Describes the events leading to the composition and signing of the Declaration of Independence, and discusses the document's importance in American history. From the "American Documents" series.

The Bill of Rights - Judith Lloyd Yero
Judith Lloyd Yero's thought-provoking text, coupled with carefully selected images from the past and present, challenge young readers to carefully examine and understand the Constitution's first ten Amendments, which guarantee their basic human rights. In addition to defining these rights, Yero puts them into the context of present-day life so that kids will recognize that the Bill of Rights is as important to their daily lives as it was to the lives of the first citizens of the newly independent United States. Included in the back matter are the full text of the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Rights of the Stamp Act Congress, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and the Miranda Rights. From the "American Documents" series.

An Inconvenient Truth - All Gore
This young readers' version of the recent documentary film's companion adult volume cuts the page count by about a third but preserves the original's cogent message and many of its striking visuals. After explaining that his interest in the environment predates even his mother's reading of Silent Spring aloud to him as a teenager, Gore proceeds to document steeply rising carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere, and then to link that to accelerating changes in temperature and precipitation patterns worldwide. Using easy-to-grasp graphics and revealing before-and-after photos, he shows how glaciers and ice shelves are disappearing all over the globe with alarming speed, pointing to profound climate changes and increased danger from rising sea levels in the near future.

New Award Books

Memory - Margaret Mahy
On the fifth anniversary of his older sister's death, nineteen-year-old Jonny Dart, troubled by feelings of guilt and an imperfect memory of the event, goes in search of the only other witness to the fatal accident and, through a chance meeting with a senile old woman, finds a way to free himself of the past. Phoenix Award Book

Waiting for the Rain - Sheila Gordon
Chronicles nine years in the lives of two South African youths--one black, one white--as their friendship ends in a violent confrontation between student and soldier. Phoenix Award Honor Book

New Pop-Up Book

Mega-Beasts - Robert Sabuda
Using pop-up illustrations and fold out pages introduces some of the largest, and smallest, prehistoric animals. Third book in the Encyclopedia Prehistorica series.

New Children's Books

Today I Will Fly! - Mo Willems
While Piggie is determined to fly, Elephant is skeptical, but when Piggie gets a little help from others, amazing things happen.

My Friend Is Sad - Mo Willems
When Gerald the Elephant is sad, Piggie is determined cheer him up, but finds after many tries that it only takes the simplest thing to change Gerald's mood.

New Graphic Novel

Castle Waiting - Linda Medley
Castle Waiting graphic novel tells the story of an isolated, abandoned castle, and the eccentric inhabitants who bring it back to life. A fable for modern times, Castle Waiting is a fairy tale that's not about rescuing the princess, saving the kingdom, or fighting the ultimate war between Good and Evil, but about being a hero in your own home.

New Children's Books

The Turkey Girl: A Zuni Cinderella Story - Penny Pollock
In this Indian variant of a familiar story, some turkeys make a gown of feathers for the poor girl who tends them so that she can participate in a sacred dance, but they desert her when she fails to return as promised.

The Egyptian Cinderella - Shirley Climo
In this version of Cinderella set in Egypt in the sixth century B.C., Rhodopes, a slave girl, eventually comes to be chosen by the Pharaoh to be his queen.

The Persian Cinderella - Shirley Climo
A retelling of the traditional Persian tale in which Settareh, neglected and abused by her stepmother and stepsisters, finds her life transformed with the help of a little blue jug.

Tracking Trash - Loree Griffin Burns
Describes the work of a man who tracks trash as it travels great distances by way of ocean currents.

Titanic: The Ship of Dreams - Duncan Crosbie
Readers gain new insight into what it was really like on board the majestic boat with photographs, letters, and journal entries. Pop-up book.

New Graphic Novel

The Baby-Sitters Club: Kristy's Great Idea - Ann M. Martin
Follows the adventures of Kristy and the other members of the Baby-sitters Club as they deal with crank calls, uncontrollable two-year-olds, wild pets, and parents who do not always tell the truth. A graphic novel based on the 1988 book by the same name.

My Thirteenth Winter - Samantha Abeel
Dyscalculia is a math-related learning disability with which the author was diagnosed at age thirteen. Schneider Family Book Award

Charlie Bone and the Time Twister - Jenny Nimmo
Back at Bloor's Academy after Christmas vacation, Charlie finds himself confronted with a new problem when young Henry Yewbeam, who vanished during a game of marbles in 1916, suddenly appears and needs help to find his family.

Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy - Jenny Nimmo
Charlie and his friends unite to rescue Ollie, a boy who was turned invisible and made to live in the attics at Bloor's Academy more than a year ago, but they are hindered by a mysterious new student who lives with Charlie's aunts.

Charlie Bone and the Castle of Mirrors - Jenny Nimmo
Charlie and his magically gifted friends and relatives work together to rescue Billy Raven, a young orphan, from a mysterious and dangerous couple who have adopted him.