Ladybug Girl written by Jacky Davis and illustrated by David Soman is full of imagination and “let’s pretend”.  Lulu, Ladybug girl, goes into a temporary state of gloom when she is told she is “too little” to tag after her older brother.  She sits in her bedroom complaining, “There’s nothing to do,” amidst incredible possibilities scattered all over her room including a dollhouse, trucks, blocks, a microscope, hula hoops, balloons, easels, art supplies, a drum, a sailboat, stuffed animals, puzzles, a guitar, books and a pair of binoculars. 
Ladybug girl, decked out in red and black polka dot boots with matching wings, a red tutu and bug-like antennae attached to a red headband, decides to take charge of her boredom.  With her dog Bingo by her side she goes outside to explore the terrain.  After a while her imagination kicks in as she rescues ants, restores a crumbling stone wall, skips down a fallen tree trunk where snakes probably are hiding, crosses a dangerous puddle where sharks could live and climbs a tree on a spying mission.  She can do anything. 

A recipient of the American Library Association’s prestigious Caldecott Award as the best illustrated children’s book of the year, David Wiesner’s Tuesday is a flawlessly illustrated, intriguing, and almost-wordless picture book.  Events begin on a Tuesday evening, around eight when all seems at peace in the local pond.  A very alert turtle is the first to notice the evening’s strange phenomenon—large bull frogs flying overhead on lily pads.  Illustrations vary from narrow vertical strips to long horizontal details overlapping full-page spreads.  As the frogs first descend on the town, we watch their obvious delight as they chase birds resting on telephone wires, sail past a window where they spook a young man eating a late-night snack, and fly down a chimney to discover the pleasure of channel surfing as they handle a sleeping woman’s TV remote control with their long, flexible tongues.  One of the most fascinating sights is of frogs cloaked with dish towels around their necks after an encounter with a clothes line.  Nowhere seems off limits as they give chase even to a watchful neighborhood dog.

First the Egg written and illustrated by Laura Vaccaro Seeger is a concept book about change.  Children have always been fascinated with the process by which one thing becomes another thing.  It has a mystery to it that is most compelling.  It is almost like magic.  This is well documented by the great popularity of Eric Carle’s classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

The Butter Man is written by Elizabeth Alalou and Ali Alalou and illustrated by Julie Klear Essakalli.  It is a story in a story told to a little girl named Nora by her father as he is cooking couscous and vegetables for dinner.  The story is about his life as a child growing up in the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco.  The story chronicles his family’s struggle when the rain stops, the fields become parched, the river dries to a trickle and famine strikes the land.  His father must leave home in search of work and food.  In order to divert the young boy from the fact that his father is gone, his tummy hurts and he has only one small piece of bread for the whole day, his mother sends him outside with his bread to wait for the butter man. 

Every day I ran down the hill to my perch to wait for the butter man.  And every day first I licked, then I nibbled on the morsel of bread as I watched the people of the village go by, forgetting for a while the gnawing feeling in my stomach.  And every day I returned empty-handed.  No more bread.  No butter man.

The text introduces words from the Berber language spoken by the people who live in the mountain regions such as Baba (Father), Bahalou (Grandfather), Mahalou (Grandmother), Oudi (butter),  Souk (Moroccan market) and, of course, Couscous (a North African pasta).

The beautiful folk art illustrations by Julie Klear Essakalli embrace the patterns and designs of life in the mountainous regions of Morocco.  There are plump white chickens with red beaks and red feet along with sheep, colorful tracks and footpaths, garden plots and trees decorating the pages.  The artist, who lives in Marrakech, paints an authenticity into the illustrations.  The book also offers two pages of author’s notes regarding the daily life, the traditions and the food grown and eaten the area.  Co-author, Ali Alalou, grew up in the High Atlas Mountains of Moracco.

Discussion questions for The Butter Man

Kate DiCamillo, whose best-selling book, Because of Winn-Dixie, was made into a popular film, is also the author of another delightful book, The Tale of Despereaux:  Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread.  Winner of the coveted Newbery Award, this is a very clever fantasy about Despereaux, an unusually tiny mouse, who falls in love with a Princess and must ultimately rescue her from the rats who hold her captive in the castle dungeon.  DiCamillo leads her reader into the story with the opening lines:
                       
Come closer, dear reader.
You must trust me.
I am telling you a story.

Through an intricate series of stories, the romantic Despereaux first reads fairy tale romances of princesses and knights and next discovers the beauty inherent in music.  Finally he experiences love-at-first-sight with Princess Pea, a human.  None of this is at all mouse-like, and he is despised by the more powerful castle mice who punish him.  Despereaux should have been eating the pages of the old book rather than reading them.  He should not have noticed the sound of music.  And, most definitely, he should have run away at the first sighting of Princess Pea, rather than standing, enthralled with love.  Thus, The Tale of Despereaux is indeed a story of the bravery required from those who do not act as they should—be it conforming to the norms of mice or humans.