Fresh and Colorful: Two new picture books from Kids Can Press

 Sylvie Desrosiers and Remy Simard have created a visual delight in this new wordless picture book, Hocus Pocus. Mister Magic's dog, relaxing at home after a hard day's work, is disturbed by the hungry rabbit in the hat, who has plenty of schemes in mind to get that coveted carrot. Jokes and accidents abound until Mister Magic awakes and all ends happily - for the rabbit.

The panels, as you can see below, are full of movement, life, and marvelous color while being simple enough that a young child can carefully follow each joke and twist of the plot. Brilliant backgrounds in yellow, green, pink and blue set off the brightly colored characters and briskly moving plot. While this one isn't an ideal storytime read-aloud, it's perfect to snuggle up with that special child or hand to an older kid to enjoy on their own.

Verdict: Highly recommended. Just out of curiosity, does anyone have a graphic novel picture book section? No? Well, it is hard to define them, but this one will definitely get added to my list. All ages will enjoy this funny romp through magic and mishap.

ISBN: 9781554535774; Published August 2011 by Kids Can Press; Review copy provided by the publisher through Raab; Purchased for the library

 Funny, someone just asked me for a picture book that showed counting to 100 and I couldn't find a thing! Now I'll simply hand them this perfect counting book.

Masayuke Sebe's Let's Count to 100! is a perfect introduction to counting to 100 with plenty of visual jokes and secrets for children and adults to enjoy finding.

Each spread shows 100 little cartoon creatures with simple instructions. Starting with mice, grouped by colors, we are instructed to count to 100 beginning with the brown mice. Hmm, they're in groups of 10 by color. And there's someone long and stringy poking over from the other page they're trying to eat...

Oh no! It's cats! The mice have got them by the tails, but they don't seem to mind. Can you find all the ones with striped tails? The spreads continue through moles, sheep, birds, fish, elephants, kids, ants, cars and trucks, and finally ten each of everything we've previously counted. A final page shows some of the special things you can find on each page.

Verdict: Perfect for small groups, individual children, and parent-child interactions. The pictures are large enough to find some of the fun things with a group, but small enough to cram lots of funny speech balloons and little surprises into the different pictures. A necessity for your concept book collection!


ISBN: 1554536618; Published August 2011 by Kids Can Press; Review copy provided by publisher through Raab; Purchased for the library