New Books

Check out some of our new children's books! As always with new books, if they're not on the new books displays, they'll be on the shelf (if they're not checked out).

E BOLDT
123 versus ABC  by: Mike Boldt

E DEAN
Pete the Cat's The Wheels on the Bus by: James Dean

E SEEGER
Bully by: Laura Vaccaro Seeger

ER RAU
Robot, go Bot! : a comic reader by: Dana Meachen Rau

Lawn Boy by Gary Paulsen

For his 12th birthday, the unnamed protagonist with an "average brain and average grades" in Gary Paulsen’s enjoyable Lawn Boy (J FIC PAULSEN) gets his grandfather's old riding lawn mower for his 12th birthday. Up until then, the kid's biggest concern is getting a new inner tube for his bike tire.

But when a neighbor with a lawn in need of mowing spots the kid's mechanical birthday gift, a business is born.

What follows is a hilarious capitalistic romp in which Paulsen skillfully slips in economic principles with the same degree of skill that parents hide vegetables in their children's meals. This is apparent in the chapter titles, which go by such names as "The Law of Increasing Product Demand Versus Flat Production Capacity" and "Dramatic Economic Expansion: Its Causes and Effects."

Faced with no competition, Lawn Boy's burgeoning landscape empire quickly grows to a degree he never dreamed of reaching. What starts out as a $20, one-lawn job, metastasizes into a round-the-clock operation involving a host of employees and a stockbroker. The kid even finds himself with muscle, a boxer by the name of Joseph Powdermilk.

"I don't know what we're doing," I said. "Not a clue. Except that we're cutting a lot of grass and I'm not getting much sleep. And this morning my mother said she was forgetting what I look like."

These scenarios require Lawn Boy to deal with practical, real-life questions: How do these people get paid? How much should they get paid? How can he run his business more efficiently? Not to mention the increased complications success brings, like how to expand at a manageable pace and how to handle conflicts with others who try to strong-arm their way into the action.

Paulsen, perhaps best known for the teen survivalist story Hatchet, here writes a fun, quick-read that younger children will like — what kid doesn't dream of what they'd do with tons of money (see also: I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Class President)? But older readers will also appreciate Lawn Boy for its economics lessons disguised in a preteen's crazy summer tale.

Here's a video trailer for the book:

New Books

Did you know the Children's Department gets new books often? We do! Here's just some of the great new books we have. As always with new books, if they're not on the new books displays, they'll be on the shelf (if they're not checked out).

E FEENEY 
Little Owl’s Orange Scarf

 
E PIZZOLI  
The Watermelon Seed 
 


E SAUER 
Mostly Monsterly

E YOON 

Penguin on Vacation

New Books

Here's some of the awesome new books in the Children's Department. As always with new books, if they're not on the new books displays, they'll be on the shelf (if they're not checked out).

E BLECHMAN
Night Light
 











E DOMINGUEZ 
Let’s Go, Hugo!











E KLAUSMEIER 
Open this Little Book










 
The book below isn't exactly newly published (it originally came out in 1964), but it does have a newly updated and reissued cover! That means this is the perfect time to read this book if you haven't already! Many of you may have seen the movie before (J DVD CHITTY), but have you read the book? Bonus tidbit: the book was written by Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels. He wrote it for his son!

J FIC FLEMING
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang : the magical car

Little Golden Books (LGB) at the Smithsonian

The Smithsonian Institution's American History Museum in Washington, D.C. is having a special display of classic Little Golden Books (LGB) from now until January in person, but you can also visit an online exhibit of some of the books here. These are the books with golden spines that changed the world of children's books. As the Smithsonian's website says: "Prior to World War II, large-format, classic story books for children were prohibitively expensive and available to a privileged few. Little Golden Books (LGB) offered new ideas and modern stories in an affordable format." Where would we be today with these books?

Example of a LGB our library has: The Poky Little Puppy (E LOWREY)

New Books

We've gotten some really cool new books in recently! Here's just a few of them. As always with new books, if they're not on the new books displays, they'll be on the shelf (if they're not checked out).

 It's a firefly night written by: Dianne Ochiltree and illustrated by: Betsy Snyder (E OCHILTREE)

The Museum written by: Susan Verde and illustrated by: Peter Reynolds (E VERDE)

Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library written by: Chris Grabenstein (J FIC GRABENSTEIN)

 The natural world written by: Jon Richards (J 508 RICHARDS)
 







 

How an Illustrator Creates a Picture Book

Adam Rex, author and illustrator of several books, has a fascinating blog post about how he creates a picture book. There are awesome pictures of his work and good details about the "insider" process of book illustrating. Check it out here to learn what it's really like to make a book!

On Adam's blog, he shows cool stuff like these "thumbnail" illustrations-in-progress for Chloe and the Lion written by Mac Barnett (E BARNETT)

 After you read his blog post, why not check out some of his many other excellent books?

 Frankenstein makes a sandwich written and illustrated by Adam Rex (J 811.6 REX)


 









Chu's Day, written by Neil Gaiman and illustated by Adam Rex (E GAIMAN)












Billy Twitters and his Blue Whale Problem written by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Adam Rex (E BARNETT)

Pssst! written and illustrated by Adam Rex (E REX)