I'm a Shark

Written and illustrated by Bob Shea

Balzer + Bray, 2011

$16.99, ages 3-6, 40 pages

Shark doesn't have a nervous bone (er, piece of cartilage) in his body, but could there be one teeny tiny thing that rattles him?

Get ready for giggles. Shea is back with another fun read-aloud, this time about a big-talking shark who tries to convince a little fish and crab that nothing can scare him.

Without wasting a page, Shark swims up to readers on the first spread, catches their eyes like a happy emoticon and  declares: 1) He's a shark and 2) He's totally awesome.

After all, he is big and broad. And just look at that pointy-tooth grin.

A Not Scary Story About Big Scary Things

By C.K. Williams

Illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska

Harcourt Children's Books, 2010

$16.99, ages 4-8, 32 pages

A boy stares down his biggest fear in the forest by refusing to believe it's real, in this clever, remarkable book.

With subtle, artful cues, award winners Williams and Swiatkowska show readers that monsters can only get to us if we think they can.

Once upon a time, despite all of the scary things he'd heard about the forest, a boy decided to walk through it, though we don't know exactly why.

Maybe he was on an errand or he lived nearby or he just wanted to go from here to there. But it didn't really matter because there he was.

He was in the very place everyone said had big, dark trees that block sunlight and cliffs that he could fall off. You know, a regular, ordinary forest where there are probably bears who growl and wolves who howl.

And how does everyone know this? "Because if you listened very hard you could almost hear them," Williams writes.