5. Gibbus Moony Wants to Bite You

Written by Leslie Muir

Illustrated by Jen Corace

Atheneum, 2011

$15.99, ages 4-8, 40 pages

When a little vampire wiggles out his baby fangs and sees the tips of big ones coming in, he flaps his wings in glee. Now, at last, he can bite something.

And not just anything. Gibbus Moony wants to sink his teeth into a nice juicy neck. The problem is, necks aren't what Moonys bite -- unless they're those of pears.

"We're fruit suckers, my boy," corrects Grandpa Waxing Mooney, a Wilfred Brimley-like fellow in an argyle-print sweater. "and proud of it."

That means, according to his prim-dressed Dad, Moonys are nectarians. "Not to be confused with those other vampire relatives," he adds, referring to portraits of caped bloodletters on the wall.

But as Gibbus flaps around in his cape, he hears only what he wants to hear, and adds a "k" to "nec" in nectarian. "I'm a necktarian!" he cries, dashing off to find his first victim.

The Humblebee Hunter

By Deborah Hopkinson, pictures by Jen Corace

Disney-Hyperion Books, 2010

$16.99, ages 4-8, 32 pages

Any child who's ever hunkered down to watch a worm crawl or mixed water with mud and grass to see what she'd get will think Henrietta Darwin's childhood was idyllic after reading this fictionalized account.

Growing up the daughter of one of the most inquisitive naturalists ever to live, the father of natural selection Charles Darwin, "Etty," as her family called her, loved to be with her father as he examined the natural world.

Etty and her siblings often gathered around his feet to hear stories about the mischief he'd get into as a child -- like when he tried to catch three beetles and made the mistake of putting one in his mouth since his hands were full.

But more than anything, Etty adored his stories of observation and imagined traveling with him to the Galapagos Islands, feeling the bony shell of a giant tortoise or giggling at the courtship of the blue-footed booby, in which the male seabird puffs himself up and stamps his turquoise feet like a silly clown.