June Recommendations

THE SECRETS OF THE JELLIES: AMAZING JELLYFISH AND THEIR SURPRISING TALENTS, written by Karen Jameson and illustrated by Marie Hermansson, offers readers a fun-and-fact-filled survey of these wondrous creatures. Designed as an aquarium tour through jellyfish exhibits, rhyming stanzas set up a series of riddles: “Jellies pulse, jellies ride, gracing waters as they glide. They teem through all the ocean zones, but did you know they have no…BONES?” It’s delightful text, easy to read and easy to learn from. The illustrations are gorgeous, with saturated colors, and they too provide information and insights into these fabulous creatures. Extensive back matter has even more info and art, and the whole thing is bookended by scenes of people enjoying the aquarium displays. An extremely appealing package!

“‘Hello, nub down there.’ ‘Hello nub up there.’” And so begins this captivating, conversational, informational fiction, friendship story between STALACTITE & STALAGMITE, written and illustrated by Drew Beckmeyer. Creatures come and go, including a trilobite, an Ichthyostega, a triceratops, a giant ground sloth, a bat, and finally humans, but the stalactite and stalagmite continue growing closer. Text is all dialog, except for a bit of explanatory back matter, and the art is bold, kid-friendly, and expressive. It’s a wonderfully creative journey through time via the perspective of a pair of warm-hearted, “mineral pile” hosts.

UNDERWEARWOLF, written by Gideon Sterer and illustrated by Charles Santoso, is a first-rate cautionary tale. When a kid who “appreciate[s] underwear” receives a cool, wooly pair from his Uncle Larry, he slips them on, despite the label’s warning not to wear them during the full moon. He shivers, sweats, and tingles his way through the ensuing transformation into an UNDERWEARWOLF! The boy, now “hairier than a hundred hamsters,” dashes into the night to do some magical prowling, unstoppable (even with a wedgie), until the “long rays of the sun” lift his curse. Text is active, direct, and waggish, with the art adding to the fun—a wall of the boy’s underwear choices on the title spread helps sell the set-up, and the werewolf in the wooly yellow undies is always very much a mischievous kid. A “wild and wicked” romp of a picture book.

In SHEEP & GOAT CLIMB THE WORLD, written by A. C. Paolini and illustrated by Monica Arnaldo, when Sheep and Goat meet, they are immediate rivals, engaging in some extremely high stakes oneupmanship over who can climb the highest. From modest beginnings—climbing on the back of a turtle (Sheep) and a small stump (Goat)—the contest escalates to include hopping, soaring, and leaping on top of a massive moose, a cabin roof, an airplane, and some famous, high altitude landmarks until they reach… the top of the world! Where they have to work together to get back down. Like the above book, SHEEP & GOAT is action-packed. Text features plenty of puns, and the watercolor, gouache, and crayon illustrations are perfect. Truly hysterical, don’t miss the endpapers which add to the fun.

In ALL THE STARS IN THE SKY, written by Art Coulson and illustrated by Winona Nelson, Clay rushes home to ask Grandma for help in making sure his teacher picks him for star of the week—meaning he’s “the most important person in the whole school,” and gets to “wear a big, shiny star for everyone to see.” But his grandma says his teacher has it backwards. She points out all the stars in their neighborhood that make up the constellation of their community, with “none of them brighter than any of the others,” and Clay takes her words to heart with a thoughtful conclusion. Text makes the case for a welcome focus on community, while the colored pencil, watercolor, and glass bead art decorate the pages both literally and whimsically. This book stayed with me long after I closed it.

WILDSPEAK, written by Sangma Francis and illustrated by Lexi Vangsnes, is an energetic, inspiring, and lyrical ode to the beauty of words and the language of nature. “Take a walk and experience “wildspeak,” meaning all the “wild, wild words waiting to be spoken.” There are wild words words that already exist, like dragonflies, mayflies, waterweeds, eddies. And there are ones just waiting to be discovered, like “bottomshimmer, rockglisten, goblingems!” The author packs the text with so many delicious phrases: dipping one’s toes in a “cold burping stream,” a meadow that’s a “fizzing place,” the girls who dance “a ruckus of wild, wild words.” It’s beautifully illustrated with watercolor, pastel, highlighters, and collage. Like the forest on the hike, this delightful book “brims with enchantment!”

—Lynn