Spring Surprises

February 1, 2010
Preschool-G In this appealing early reader, spring arrives via rhymed couplets and set within a pleasant valley. Featuring stanzas like Welcome, sunshine, / warm our cheeks. / Melt the snow / and fill the creeks, the text is spare but covers a lot of ground in not too many pages, as four children play outsideby a river, in a meadow, and at a farm. In keeping with the Step Into Reading series, this Step 2 story includes basic vocabulary, short sentences, and a few fun new words, like hollyhock and pollywogs, that students will be able to sound out. Swearingens illustrations feature happy, active children and animalseven the dolls made from hollyhocks look bright-eyed in this accessible ode to spring. The book ends as night falls, with the world seemingly exhausted by the day of adventure and play: Bullfrogs croak, / owls WHO-WHO. / That is all / this day can do.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2010
Four children and a dog step out of Dick-and-Jane-land and into this celebration of an idealized country springtime. Pastel colors dominate the illustrations showing the smiling kiddies exploring stream, field, and barnyard. The rhyming text is uneven in places, and while the vocabulary is largely simple, new readers will stumble over hollyhocks and may not know that a kid is a baby goat.

(Copyright 2010 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)