Otter and Odder: A Love Story

By James Howe

Pictures by Chris Raschka

Candlewick, 2012

$14, ages 6 and up, 40 pages.

Just as Otter snatches a fish from the river, he realizes the fish is quite a catch -- and he'd rather love her than eat her.

But can an otter date his food source? And if he does, can he still eat her family?

In this perfect little picture book, an otter known simply as Otter and fish called Myrtle try to figure out how to love each other in a world where straying from the food chain just isn't done.

The Best of the Best!

 Caldecott Medal Winner                      Newbery Medal Winner

Chris Raschka, Random House

Jack Gantos, Farrar, Straus & Giroux

35. Where Do You Go?

Little Black Crow, written and illustrated by Chris Raschka, Atheneum, $16.99, ages 4-7, 40 pages. A boy in a trapper hat looks up into the winter sky and wonders where the wind will take a little crow, as soft strokes of watercolor paint sweep the story from one page to the next. Caldecott Medalist Raschka's spare, yet exuberant, style is beguiling: it fills us with the same feelings of awe that we hear in the boy's words, as he watches the crow from off of the page. "Little black crow, where will you go?" he asks from the seat we see only at the end, atop a wood rail fence. The black bird sits in a leaf-bare tree, his beak bigger than his head and his ink-drawn body as expressive as a character in calligraphy.