Jack Prelutsky’s The Dragons are Singing Tonight (illustrated by Peter Sís and published by Greenwillow, 1993) is a poetry books about dragon–pet dragons, lazy dragons, mechanical dragons, disconsolate dragons, baby dragons–dragons of all shapes and sizes.  My sister read this book often to her five boys when they were little and they love it to this day.

Using wonderful rythms and imagery, The Dragons are Singing Tonight tells the secrets of a dragon’s life.  What should you do if your dragon gets sick?  The poem My Dragon Wasn’t Feeling Good has the answer:

(This post is in honor of my mother Marian, one of the wisest–and kindest–women I have ever known.)

The Owl and the Pussy-cat is a famous nonsense poem written by the English poet, author, and illustrator Edward Lear.  A contemporary of Lewis Carroll, Lear first published the poem in 1871, and it has been illustrated and re-illustrated ever since.  The edition to the left was illustrated by Paul Galdone (Clarion, 1987).   Jan Brett also illustrated a Caribbean-style version in 1989 (Philomel).

The Owl and the Pussy-cat  is charming and silly, lilting and eminently memorizable.  When I was a girl, my mother recited this poem and had us children memorize it (the other great nonsense poem we learned being “The Purple Cow” by Gelett Burgess).  I believe all of my six siblings can still recite ”The Owl and the Pussycat” to this day (and shame on them if they can’t). 

After the owl and the pussy-cat sailed away in “a beautiful pea-green boat,” Owl serenaded his lovely Puss by the light of the stars.  Being a liberated female,

Not to worry.   After “sail[ing] away for a year and a day,” the couple finds an enterprising Piggy who is delighted to sell them his nose ring.  They are married the very next day by a turkey and celebrate with a magnificent feast using runcible spoons (a term coined by Lear and now in the dictionary).  They end the perfect wedding with dancing on the beach “by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon.”

Really, could there be anything more romantic?

So here’s to my mother, Marian.  Intelligent, compassionate, wise, and abundantly unselfish.   How we miss her.

What would you do if you woke up one morning and discovered that you had grown antlers?  If the thought has never even crossed your mind, then you should read Imogene’s Antlers, written and illustrated by David Small (Random House, 1985).

When Imogene wakes up on Thursday to find antlers on her head, it creates a few problems.  Getting dressed is tricky.  Getting out the door is  trickier.

Imogene’s mother is so shocked she faints clean away.  The doctor can find nothing wrong.  The principal has no suggestions.

But Imogene doesn’t seem to mind.  Antlers make great towel racks, lovely perches for birds, and the perfect candelbra when Imogene practices the piano.

Besides, Imogene wakes Friday morning to find the antlers gone.  Voilà, problem solved!    

Or is it?

Have you ever lived far away from relatives?  Wanted to go visit but couldn’t?  Then The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman by Darcy Pattison, illustrated by Joe Cepeda (Harcourt, 2003) is a must read for you.

The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman tells the story of Tameka from Redcrest, California.  She writes her Uncle Ray in South Carolina and begs him to come for a visit.  Uncle Ray replies that he can’t make it–he’s got to work all summer–but he’s sending his friend Oliver K. Woodman instead.

Well, Oliver K. Woodman is a man that Uncle Ray made from wood scraps (he reminds me of the Tinman in the Wizard of Oz), and he hitchhikes all the way from South Carolina to California.  Along the way, Oliver’s benefactors write to Uncle Ray and tell him about Oliver’s journey.

Aside from being a great way to learn geography, the story is told as a series of letters written by different characters.  Author Darcy Pattison does a fantastic job with all these different voices.  Tameka is simple and straightforward: “Please come to visit us this summer.  We will go camping.  We can swim and catch fish.  You are my favorite uncle.  Please say you will come!”   

A trucker writes Uncle Ray that Oliver K. Woodman is “an easy fella to travel with.  He never needs bathroom stops.  He doesn’t care where we eat.  And he stays awake with me all night.”   Three little old ladies who give Oliver a ride from Salt Lake City to California tell of their “distinct pleasure of entertaining Mr. Oliver K. Woodman for the past 23 days . . . he has the loveliest manners.” 

And finally, Bernard Grape, attorney at law, writes that he will deliver Oliver to Tameka’s doorstep: “Our family, currently on vacation, picked up the above named person in what I thought was a misguided goodwill gesture.  Little did I know how lucky that gesture would be.”

Oliver makes it to Tameka’s house thanks to the kindness of strangers, and Tameka and her family make it to Uncle Ray’s too.  At home with the people you love best.  The perfect happy ending.

If you love the art of Georgia O’Keefe, you’ll love the picture book My Name is Georgia written and illustrated by Jeanette Winter (1998, Harcourt).  I picked this picture book up in Santa Fe when I was visiting the Georgia O’Keefe museum there.  It’s a very simple biography of the artist from her days as a girl to art school in Chicago and then New York:  “At school, I painted my teacher’s ideas.  But when school days were over, I went out into the wide world to discover my own ideas.” 

Georgia paints the Texas sky, the sunset and clouds.  She paints flowers:  “I painted a camellia.  I painted it BIG, so people would notice.  I painted a jack-in-the-pulpit.  I painted it BIG, so people would see.”

Then she goes to the New Mexico desert.  Georgia again finds things to paint:  bones, deserts, mountains, and again the sky.  And in her last painting, she painted the sky.  “I painted my sky BIG, so people would see the sky the way I did.”

Georgia O’Keefe lived to be ninety-eight years old.  To my mind, her art seems particularly accessible to children.  It has a childlike immediacy and boldness of form and color that appeals to them.  So take your kiddo to the art museum then come home and read My Name is Georgia.

The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by DuBose Heyward and illustrated by Marjorie Flack tells the story of the five Easter bunnies.  Yes, five.  If you haven’t read the story, you probably didn’t know there were five.

At any rate, a little country girl bunny decided that she wanted to grow up to be an Easter bunny.  But all the fancy white bunnies and big Jack-rabbits with their long legs laughed at her.   ”The little girl Cottontail grew up to be a young lady Cottontail.  And by and by she had a husband and then one day, much to her surprise there were twenty-one Cottontail babies to take care of.”  And all the fancy white rabbits and big Jack-rabbits laugh at her again and say, “Only a country rabbit would go and have all those babies.  Now take care of them and leave Easter eggs to great big men bunnies like us.”  I kid you not.  That is a direct quote from the book.

Well, those baby bunnies grew and their Cottontail mama taught two of them to sweep, two to make beds, two to cook, two to wash dishes, two to wash linens, two to sew and mend, two to sing and two to dance to entertain the others while they worked, two to garden, and two to paint, and the last little bunny she made keeper of her chair, and he pulled out the chair for her at supper.

Eventually the time came again to pick another Easter bunny.   Little Cottontail Mother and her family travelled to the Palace of Easter Eggs to see Old Grandfather pick the newest Easter bunny.  And naturally Old Grandfather picked Cottontail Mother because she was wise, kind, and swift, and the kids would have no trouble taking care of things while she was gone (don’t ask me where Papa bunny was–the story doesn’t say a word about him). 

The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes was first published in 1939 Houghton Mifflin not long after women got the vote, but well before the Women’s Movement of the 60′s.  Little Cottontail Bunny is the original supermom.  She breaks through the glass ceiling of male Easter bunnies, proves her bravery and gets fancy gold shoes to boot.  And she does it all before her little baby bunnies wake up.

Well, what can you say about Mother Goose?  My mother adored Mother Goose and read it to us often.  But frankly, as a parent I never really got into it.  I know the historic and literary relevance of nursery rhymes, but they just didn’t do much for me.  My kids never seemed much interested in them either.

Then I got the Mother Goose edition selected and illustrated by Mary Engelbreit (HarperCollins, 2005 with an introduction by the esteemed children’s literature historian Leonard S. Marcus).  And my attitude changed.  It’s just about impossible to resist the charms of Mary Engelbreit’s illustrations.

Mother Goose became my daughter’s favorite book.  And page fifty contains her favorite rhyme:

Ickle ockle, blue bockle,

Fishes in the sea,

If you want a pretty maid,

Please choose me. 

And why was this her favorite rhyme?  Because of its illustration:  a charming, little mermaid awash in a cascade of sunken treasure jewelry.  “Oh, to be a mermaid!”  My favorite illustration was Jack Spratt and his wife, but every night my daughter turned to page fifty before any other. 

So if you have a nursery rhyme resistant child, try Mary Engelbreit’s Mother Goose.   It just might convert them.

Some children’s books are classics.  Take Munro Leaf’s The Story of Ferdinand (Robert Lawson, illustrator).  Originally published in 1936 by Viking, Ferdinand tells the story of a gentle, little bull who doesn’t want to butt and stick his horns around.  Ferdinand wants to “sit just quietly under the cork tree and smell the flowers.” 

But when Ferdinand sits on a bee and gets stung, Ferdinand gets picked to fight in the bullfight in Madrid.  Will Ferdinand fight?

Ferdinand is a charmer–from his hulking adult body rippling with muscles to his scared little face peeking around the doorway of the bull ring to his beatific bovine body plopped down in the center of the bullring completely content to just sit and smell the flowers from all the lovely ladies.  (The picture of the lovely ladies with flowers in their hair was always my favorite when I was a girl.) 

It’s interesting to consider that this book was written when Hitler was butting and sticking his horns around plenty.  At the time of its publication, The Story of Ferdinand was banned in Spain and burned as propoganda by Nazi Germany.  

But the world would be a better place if people were more like Ferdinand and his mother.  Ferdinand doesn’t fall for the peer pressure of the other little bulls.  His mother perfectly understands when to gently pressure and when to back off and let her child make his own decision.  Face it, sometimes animals are much better people than people.  Just ask Charlotte and Wilbur.

Another book for kids who love trains.  Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo by Kevin Lewis, (Illustrated by Daniel Kirk, Hyperion, 1999).

And we’re off for a day of adventure with a toy train  and all his toy passengers as they travel through the playroom.  Bright, cheery graphics, fun rhyme and a great refrain make this an especially fun read-aloud book.  And the train takes the reader all the way to bedtime with a little boy sleeping with his toy train by his side: 

Move over Beatrix Potter because Little Rabbit is one cute bunny.   I just finished Little Rabbit Goes to School (Peachtree, 2004) and really for me, it’s all about the illustrations.  The story’s cute, yes, but this is a book I’d get for the illustrations. 

The Little Rabbit books tell about typical joys and fears of childhood:  the excitement of a birthday, getting lost at “Rabbit World,” not wanting to share, the desire to be “big.”  Little Rabbit Goes to School begins, “When Little Rabbit woke up, he knew that it was a special day.  Today was his first day of school.” 

But it’s the illustrations that enchant.  Little Rabbit with his thirteen or so siblings in their snug rabbit house at the foot of a giant tree.  And Little Rabbit is pretty much irresistible in his little jumpsuit complete with hat shaped like bunny ears.  He wears them 24/7, and it’s a good thing he does.  Otherwise we’d get him mixed up with all the other bunnies hopping around on these pages.  Just as mischievous and charming as his literary ancestor, Little Rabbit is a 21st century Peter Rabbit, and every bit as winsome.

(And winsome is the perfect word here.  [win-suh m] adj.: sweetly or innocently charming; winning; engaging.)