7. Super Size It!

Piggies Big Book

By Audrey Wood and Don Wood

Houghton Mifflin, 2011

16 3/8 inches x 18 inches

$26.99, 32 pages.

This little piggie has gotten a whole lot bigger.

Scaled up to fill out a lap, the Wood's 1991 ode to the English finger-play and nursery rhyme, "This Little Piggy," is even cuter than it was in picture book format.

Each roly-poly pig dances across hands bigger than the readers' (perhaps even than their heads!), allowing readers to be closer to these jolly bovines than ever before.

Children get to zoom in on their outfits, expressions and mischief, and imagine they're climbing on the hand too and cavorting about on finger tips.

Better get a second copy. You'll be itching to frame every page on a child's wall.

The Circus Ship Big Book

By Chris Van Dusen

Candlewick, 2011
17 3/16 inches x 17 15/16 inches.
$24.99, ages 4-8, 40 pages

Chris Van Dusen makes you happy every time you look at his work. So, scaling up one of his classics only heightens that feeling.

Here, the pictures are so big that it feels like they're opening up around readers and the story is playing out before them.

In this 2009 gem, a circus ship runs aground off the coast of Maine, and the cruel circus owner saves himself, but leaves the animals to fend for themselves.

After paddling all night, the bedraggled animals find themselves on an idyllic island. At first the people there are wary of the animals, but soon the animals win them over: the tiger runs into a burning shed to save a girl.

Overnight, the villagers learn to treasure the animals, and they live together side by side. Then one day, the circus owner storms in to take his animals back, and the villagers help hide the animals and lead him astray.

Dusen's search-and-finds are a delight scaled up. Readers feel pulled into scenes to figure out where each animal is hidden.

Pass this one on to a reluctant reader and he'll be laying on his tummy on the floor soaking up every page.

King Hugo's Huge Ego

A charmer about the follies of being a windbag.

Written and illustrated by Chris Van Dusen
Candlewick, 2011
$16.99, ages 3-6, 40 pages

A boastful king is brought down to earth by a maiden who zaps him with a curse that makes his head swell in Van Dusen's hilarious fairy tale.

With playful, clever rhymes and illustrations that pop, the two-time Caldecott winner introduces us to King Hugo, a tiny guy who's a glutton for gloating.

Though Hugo is only three foot three and requires a ladder to reach his throne, he thinks himself much loftier than anyone else.

He struts about, ordering gardeners to clip topiaries to his likeness and sculptors to top fountains with statues of himself in a cocky pose.

His subjects, all longer legged than he, are required to bow to the ground when he passes. For if they bowed at the waist, the king still couldn't look down at them.

And every Friday, King Hugo's guards herd his subjects to the base of his tower and force them to listen to him go on and on about how much the king adores himself and why they should too.

But then one day, as King Hugo's gold coach is rolling down the road from his castle, a maiden walking down the middle of the road refuses to step aside and bow to him.