Stars

Written by Mary Lyn Ray

Illustrated by Marla Frazee

Beach Lane Books, 2011

$16.99, ages 2-6, 40 pages

An acclaimed author contemplates what stars are for, in a picture book reminiscent of Ruth Kraus' A Hole is to Dig.

"A star is how you know it's almost night," Mary Lyn Ray writes, as a boy walks his dog and gazes at the darkening sky.

Ray, the author of Basket Moon, describes stars as reassuring lights that never go away and shares other stars that are close enough to touch.

When day ends, the stars in the heavens click on like strings of white lights, and "the dark that comes doesn't feel so dark."

If only they weren't so far away, never to be held or carried. But suppose you could have a star of your own, one that fit right in your hand.

1. The Flint Heart

Written by Katherine & John Paterson

Illustrated by John Rocco

Candlewick, 2011

$19.99, ages 7 and up, 304 pages

Twelve-year-old Charles and little sister Unity try to stop an ancient rock from turning men into brutes, in Katherine and John Paterson's droll, magical remake of Eden Phillpott's 1910 story.

The rock, a heart-shaped charm chipped from flint, gives anyone who wears it a hard heart, no matter how kind they once were.

It was uncovered by a mystery man in the Stone Age, and created such terror back then that it was buried deep in a grave under a pile of rocks for five thousand years.

Then about 100 years ago, Charles' father Billy Jago made the mistake of unearthing it near his farm in Merripit, and he was turned into a nasty wretch of a man.

Unaware that the Flint Heart had caused his father's drastic behavior, Charles and five-year-old Unity set off with their dog Ship to ask the pixies for a gift to soften his temper. 

2. The Conductor

By Laetitia Devernay

Chronicle, 2011

$18.95, ages 5-8, 72 pages

A maestro stands on the top of a tree and conducts the leaves into a melody of flying birds, in this wordless masterpiece by an award-winning French artist.

One day, a conductor dressed in black tails and striped pants walks through a beautiful wood where delicate leaves are balled up on lollipop-shaped trees.

Holding his baton at the ready, he searches for music he can shape, then glances skyward and decides to climb one of the many stilt-like trunks.

Reaching the top, the conductor stands perfectly still. His dark bangs swoop off to one side with a flourish and he lifts his baton from the side of his leg.

Stretching his arms outward, the conductor signals to the leaves of all of the trees that the music is about to begin.

Then he delicately cues one cluster of leaves to fly out of the canopy into a bird, leaving a cookie-cutter shape of the flying bird behind.

3. Fly Trap

By Frances Haringe

HarperCollins, 2011

$16.99, ages 10 and up, 592 pages

Orphan Mosca Mye once more uses her fly-like cunning to evade ruffians, but this time will this little pebble of a girl be able to exact revenge?

In this delicious followup to Hardinge's Fly by Night, 12-year-old Mye again finds herself in a sticky mess that only a mistrustful mind could scheme a way out of.

Having barely escaped with their lives from the rebel city of Mandelion, Mye and her traveling companions, Eponymous Clent and her ornery goose Soren, are now on the run to Toll, a peculiar city split in two.

Toll, as they see it, is their only chance to start anew, as it give access across a gorge that belongs to the River Langfeather and to "fairer counties."

The three agree that they cannot return to places they've been before, as they've left behind a path of thefts, frauds, and "goose-related blasphemies."

The last to-do was in Mandelion, where they accidentally fired up a revolution and in doing so, thwarted plans by a band of Locksmiths to take over the city.

Locksmith agent Aramai Goshawk warned the three never to return to Mandelion. So they fled to the little sheep-farming town of Grabely -- only to get into another mess of trouble.

5. Wonderstruck

Written & illustrated by Brian Selznick

Scholastic, 2011

$29.99, ages 9 and up, 608 pages

A book, a locket and a dream about wolves leads a deaf boy to a wondrous discovery, in this tour-de-force by a Caldecott Award winner.

Brian Selznick, the creator of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, astounds us again with a novel that feels at times like a silent movie reel, as the written story shifts between pencil drawings that go on for several pages.

In the story, two deaf children living 50 years apart in time run away from home in search of things to fill an emptiness in their lives, not yet knowing they're lives will become entwined.

Selznick choreographs two lives separated by time and place, and so adeptly that we become absorbed in the story instantly.

Our reading pace is driven by the drama that unfolds in each frame, and as the children race to discover truths they so desperately need to find, Selznick pans in on faces and scenes, and heightens our sense of urgency.

Along the way, Selznick beautifully illuminates the experience of being deaf, recently and in a more distant past. Readers see how isolated deaf people once were, often at the hands of well-intentioned, but misguided adults.

6. Bumble-Ardy

Written & illustrated by Maurice Sendak

HarperCollins, 2011

$17.95, ages 1 and up, 40 pages

Here's a book that feels like a reissued classic, when all the while, we muse with delight, that it's wonderfully, completely new.

Returning to picture books at age 83, Sendak writes with the same rhythm and panache we've long adored.

This time he offers a whimsical rhyme about a pig who never had a birthday party until he turned nine.

All of Bumble's life, his family neglected to celebrate the day. Then when he turned eight, his mom and dad "gorged and gained weight / and got ate."

Oh my, so drolly grim. But then, just like that, Bumble's world flips back around, and he's taken in by an aunt divine, Adeline.

With Adeline, Bumble turns nine. And dear she is. Adeline agrees to celebrate his day for the very first time.

But when nothing happens the morning of his birthday, Bumble fears that she's forgotten.

So after his aunt heads off to work, Bumble throws a bash for himself and in Sendak fashion, lets the rumpus begin.

7. The Masterwork of a Painting Elephant

Written by Michelle Cuevas

Illustrated by Ed Young

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011

$15.99, ages 6 and up, 144 pages

In this quirky, wonderful little novel, an abandoned baby crawls off into the night and into the heart of lonely ex-circus elephant.

Along the way, the baby grows into a boy and helps the elephant find a beautiful thing with feathers that stole the elephant's heart years ago.

And the boy, who wonders what happened to his parents, discovers what it truly means to give his heart to another.

Birch, the elephant, feels that something is missing from his life, and is sad that his trunk is used for menial things.

He's been put to work hosing off cars at a car wash since the circus shut down. Yet it is not what trunks are for, he tells himself.

They're for touching, lifting, greeting, caressing, making things of beauty.

Ever since he almost saw a painting of a phoenix, he's daydreamed of using his trunk to paint.

Yet Birch doesn't quite now how to get out from under his situation.

Then one day he finds a baby boy in a pile of leaves and his world changes.

8. The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories

By Dr. Seuss

Assembled by Charles D. Cohen

Random House, 2011

$15, ages 6 and up, 72 pages

"Think left and think right and think low and think high!" Oh the thinks, Charles D. Cohen thought up, because he searched and he tried!

Cohen, the world's foremost Seuss scholar and collector, used his noggin just right when he followed a hunch that there was more to Seuss than many of us had read.

He burrowed into library collections and hunted the Internet to recover seven magazine stories written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss between 1948 and 1959  -- a challenge given that magazines then, as now, were routinely tossed out when the next month's issue arrived.

This amazing selection, culled from Redbook magazine, includes a few stories that may be familiar, like "The Bear, the Rabbit and the Zinniga-Zanniga," recorded by Marvin Miller in a Dr. Seuss Presents album.

In that story, a rabbit outwits a bear with a single eyelash.

But many of the stories will be delightfully, novelly new.

9. The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: 14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales

Created by Chris van Allsburg

Introduced by Lemony Snicket

Houghton Mifflin, 2011

$24.99, ages 10 and up, 208 pages

Fourteen celebrated authors sort out the mysteries of one of the most beloved literary ruses of all time, in this wonderfully eerie story collection.

Authors from Jules Feiffer to Kate DiCamillo hone their imaginations on pictures from Chris van Allsburg’s acclaimed The Mysteries of Harris Burdick to create their own incredible tales.

The result is a captivating collection that leaves readers imagining that the authors, by some magical turn, tapped into Burdick’s imagination and unearthed what he was thinking.

The collection is introduced by Lemony Snicket and comprises 14 stories, including one by Allsburg, in which he offers a magical twist on his picture, “Oscar and Alphonse.”

10. Squish Rabbit

Written & illustrated by Katherine Battersby

Viking, 2011

$12.99, ages 2 and up, 40 pages

A little bunny struggles to be heard in a world much bigger than him, in this tender, debut by Australia's Battersby.

Squish Rabbit, a floppy fellow with a saggy bottom and mismatched eyes, is so tiny that sometimes he isn't even noticed.

In fact, that's how he got his name.

One day he was bending over to marvel at a tiny red flower and a scaly-legged giant stepped on him.

Being wee, his body bounces back. But his heart? Well, the hurt of being overlooked doesn't go away.

11. The Midnight Zoo

By Sonya Hartnett

Illustrated by Andrea Offermann

Candlewick, 2011

$16.99, ages 10 and up, 208 pages

Two brothers on the run from Nazi Germans stumble upon an abandoned zoo where they struggle to make sense of a terrifying world, in this deeply moving novel by the author of Thursday's Child.

When Germans invade their clan's camp, killing their uncle and taking their gypsy parents captive, 12-year-old Andrej and 9-year-old Tomas flee for their lives to an empty village crushed by Nazi bombs.

The village is like a ghost town, eerie and dangerous. They forage in the rubble for scraps of food, guarding a secret bundle in their knapsack. Then one night, they let loose and run through the streets.

Their arms stretch out like wings of airplanes and their hands jounce along the iron bars of a fence. They're imagining, if only for a few moment, that they don't know the horrors of war.

Then all of a sudden a low, gravely noise stirs them from their play, the growl of a rangy wolf. Its footfalls threaten from behind and they flee for shelter. Then just as quickly the wolf stops in its tracks, and they realize it cannot get to them.

The wolf is behind the fence that they ran their fingers over, in a small zoo, a circuit of cages laid out like a garden.

12. Every Thing On It

Written & illustrated by Shel Silverstein

HarperCollins, 2011

$19.99, ages 1 and up, 208 pages

Everything on it. That's how you order a serving of Shel Silverstein.

You pile on all the poems and drawings of his that you can get.

In the title poem of this fantastic collection, a boy piles on crazy things on his hotdog -- a snake, a hat, you name it.

But unlike his hotdog with everything on it, with Silverstein, there's nothing you'd want to leave out.

And luckily we don't have to!

In this volume, fans get to devour 145 poems by the late great Silverstein that were edited out of earlier books.

Edited out, not because he thought them lesser, but because they didn't fit the organization of a particular book.

13. The Unwanteds

By Lisa McMann

Aladdin, 2011

$16.99, ages 10-14, 400 pages

Teens condemned to death for having creative thoughts are spirited away to safety, in this first book of a wondrous new series by the author of the Wake trilogy.

At the age of 13, the creative children of Quill are weeded out by their cold, oppressive leaders and put to death, for fear they will think for themselves and mobilize an uprising.

During the day of Purge, Alex Stowe, along with Lani, Meghan and Samheed, are marked as "Unwanteds," useless and dangerous members of society, and sent by bus to The Great Lake of Boiling Oil to be killed.

Just as guards known as Eliminators prepare to toss the kids in, a magician named Mr. Today secretly transports the teens into Artime, a magical realm he created within Quill.

For the first time in their lives, the teens are allowed to think for themselves and express their creative sides, as Mr. Today sets them on a path to become magical warriors.

14. Neville

Written by Norman Juster

Illustrated by G. Brian Karas

Schwartz & Wade, 2011

$17.99, ages 4 and up, 32 pages

A boy is uprooted from all that he knows and sets off in search of himself, in this brilliant picture book by the author of The Hello, Goodbye Window.

No one ever asked the boy about moving to a new house. His folks just told him it would happen and he'd love his new home.

"That's what they always said when they knew he wouldn't love something," the boy tells himself.

The boy is certain he'll never feel at home in the new neighborhood and what's worse, he doesn't have any friends waiting for him.

Feeling very glum, he shuffles off for a walk from his new house and a block later, stops in his tracks, cups his hands around his mouth and yells, "NEVILLE!"

15. A House in the Woods

Written & illustrated by Inga Moore

Candlewick, 2011

$ 16.99, ages 3 and up, 48 pages

Two pigs return home to find their sweet but clumsy friends have moved in and wrecked their delicate shelters, in this adorable picture book by Inga Moore.

Oh dear, Moose and Bear really meant no harm. They just thought they'd stay a bit.

But as they squeezed into one little pig's den and another's hut, the roofs tumbled in over their heads.

Now Moose, Bear and the little pigs don't have a place in the woods to call their own.

But not to worry, because Moose has a brilliant idea:

The four friends will hire the beavers to build them a big house of logs where they can all live together.