5. Pick Me! Pick Me!

Clink

Written by Kelly DiPucchio

Illustrated by Matthew Myers

Balzer & Bray, 2011

$16.99, ages 4-7, 32 pages.

A run-down robot named Clink dreams of belonging to a child, but none of the children who come to the toy shop seem to want a toy like him.

He's got loose springs, and his selling points seem to be duds. All he can do is play music and pop out burned toast from the toaster that's his noggin.

Children nowadays want robots with zing -- which is what every other robot in the shop seems to have.

Clink's robot friend Zippy has retractable arms that twirl out and grab things, and Penny, wow.

She can bake cookies with one arm and do math homework with the other. What child wouldn't want that?

Poor Clink, all he does is "Plink! Plop!" and fizzle.

3. Zombie in Love

Written by Kelly DiPucchio

Illustrated by Scott Campbell

Atheneum Books, 2011

$12.99, ages 4-8, 32 pages

A zombie goes online to find the girl of his dreams, an undead gal with chipped up teeth, in this hilarious love story that's as cute for Halloween as it is for Valentine's Day.

Mortimer, a bulgy-eyed fellow with sallow skin and shredded clothes, longs for love but as Valentine's day approaches, he seems to be looking for love in all the wrong places. 

At the bus stop, he offers a box of chocolate-covered worms to a girl on a bench but she scooches away. And when the mail carrier rings his door bell, he thrusts a beating heart in her face, but she cringes.

Even the waitress at the dinner gives him the cold shoulder. "But why?" he wonders to himself. After all he did offer her a diamond ring -- all nicely presented in a hinged box, on a severed ring finger.

Poor Mortimer, he just doesn't have the touch. Perhaps what he needs are a few primers on dating. So, he buries himself in a pile of books about dead dates and graveyard love, then takes their advice and tries to look available.