Skinny as a bean pole and born on February 12, a young boy points out the similarities between himself and Abraham Lincoln. Ted Lewin’s extraordinary black-and-white drawings of Lincoln contrast nicely with the colorful paintings of this boy and his world.

Cows wear dresses, pigs wear wigs, and sheep are scholars on George Washington’s farm. Humorous rhymes, with pictures to match, explain why Washington left his farm to go into politics.

Before school, Horace finds a small toy truck on the playground and keeps it. When he plays with the truck during snack time, a classmate, Walter, yells that the truck is his. Horace lies to his teacher. That night he also lies to his mother. After a troubled night, Horace is too “sick” to go to school. He receives get-well letters from his classmates — even one from Walter. Walter offers Horace an opportunity to return the truck with no hard feelings. This important topic, not often found in picture …

In this Byrd Baylor prose-poem classic, Indian children in the Southwest make a game of collecting pieces of ancient pottery and trying to fit the pieces together. Their parents remind them to treat the clay with respect because “every piece of clay is a piece of someone’s life” and every piece “has its own small voice and sings in its own way.” As the children carefully touch the pieces of clay, they listen for the songs they sing and think about the hands that shaped them. And as they examine …

In this retold Ojibwe tale, a little girl’s courage and determination save her village from a terrible disease and bring the delicate lady slipper flower to the forests of the Great Lakes. By listening closely to nature, the hissing snow, rumbling ice, and dancing northern lights, the little girl is able to bring healing herbs back from a neighboring village. The next spring she goes back to look for a pair of beaded ma-ki-sins she lost during her harrowing journey to retrieve the medicine. Instead, all along her route, wherever …

This Cherokee creation tale tells the story of a quarrel between the first man and woman. When the woman walks away from her husband’s harsh words, he follows, but is not able to catch up. The Sun sees how sorry the man is and tries to help by causing various berries to grow in her path. Only the sweetness of strawberries, however, has the power to stop her and allow her husband a chance to ask for forgiveness. This is how strawberries came to be, and now whenever Cherokee people …

Stuart J. Murphy believes that if math had been explained to him as a child using illustrations, he would have understood math concepts more easily. So he has come up with his own series of math storybooks (divided into three levels) with pictures by well-known children’s book illustrators. In Safari Park, a Level 3 book in this series (ages 7 and up), a boy Paul, his sister, and three cousins have 20 tickets each to spend at the newly opened Safari Park. The Tiger Wheel costs 4 tickets, the Bat …

A busy triangle gets tired of holding up roofs, being slices of pie and halves of sandwiches, and even of doing its favorite activity — slipping into place when people put their hands on their hips. It thinks life would be more interesting if the local shapeshifter gave it one more side and one more angle. And so the triangle is transformed into a quadrilateral. Although as a quadrilateral it is a television screen, a window frame, and more, it soon grows tired of that shape, too. Each time it …

Red Riding Hood is taking a basket of 12 cookies to Grandma, but along the way she encounters nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters who request some of the goodies. At each character’s request, the reader turns the wheel and chooses the amount of cookies (0, 1, or 2) to share and, at the end, figures out how many cookies are left for Grandma. This interactive book can be read several times with many different outcomes. Give children actual or make- believe cookies (template provided in book) to figure out …

How many pennies in a nickel? What combination of coins equals a dollar? Catchy rhymes and photographs of real money teach children about coin denominations, grouping, and counting. Coins are shown in sets with written equations so students can readily see equivalents. Adding real coins while working through this book will add real meaning to the value of money.