Junie B.’s Essential Survival Guide to School, by Barbara Park, $12.99.For thousands of Colorado students facing academic re-entry this month, this helpful book of tips takes some of the sting out of sweltering in class while the pools are still open.
It’s full of advice about school supplies, divided into two categories (“Boring Dumb” and “Fun”), and reality checks, e.g., the deceptive term “carpooling”: “There was no actual ‘pool’ in the car! And what kind of mean joke was that, I ask you?”
While other school guidebooks pander to the Goody Two-Shoes toadies, the Junie B. handbook addresses fallible mortals. There is a whole chapter (“Getting In Trouble”) of invaluable suggestions about Names You Should Not Call People. Junie B. suggests substituting “Hamster Pants” for more unacceptable insults.
There’s more, including Dumb School Rules, Rules You Have To Follow At The Lunch Table Or Else You Get in Trouble, diplomacy in the principal’s office and how to cope with unpleasant notes meant for the parents of a misbehaving student.
Parents, note: Much of this wisdom also applies to office politics. (Ages 6 and up)
Notes from the Dog, by Gary Paulsen, $15.99. Here’s a different sort of survival guide from the author of the perennially popular “Hatchet.” In this story, a pudgy loner named Finn finds himself dragged away from the summer he’d envisioned reading and avoiding human contact.
The galvanizing force: A dynamic neighbor, Johanna, who is undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer while training for a triathlon. She inspires teenager Finn and his best friend, Matthew, to venture far from their normal wallflower status, unearthing their talents for fundraising, deeply listening and compassion. Her less successful effort to mold Finn into a master gardener brings comic relief to a deceptively simple story. Ages 12 and up.
Just the Right Size: Why Big Animals are Big and Little Animals are Little, by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Neal Layton, $14.99. Did you ever wonder why dinosaurs remained relatively small (120 feet long, 100 tons) compared to blue whales (100 feet long, up to 190 tons)? Davies explains in lively, accessible prose that will lodge forever in your memory.
Especially when you learn that if a blue whale was 200 feet long, it “would need guts, lungs and kidneys so big that they wouldn’t fit in its body.” Now, that’s a science experiment waiting to happen. (Age 8 and up)
Under the Snow, by Melissa Stewart, illustrated by Constance R. Bergum, $16.95. Winter may be a distant memory during the dog days of August, but try cooling off by reading about the innovative ways that insects, fish and animals devise to survive the coldest months.
You probably know that chipmunks hibernate, but Bergum’s cozy illustration shows its dry, leafy nest deep below the snow. Did you realize that wood frogs “can freeze solid and still survive”? Ages 4 to 8.
Fourteen Cows for America, by Carmen Agra Deedy with Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah, illustrated by Thomas Gonzalez, $17.95. Even enormous news travels slowly to a Maasai village in a remote part of Kenya, where nobody had heard about the tall buildings that collapsed in fires so hot that iron melted. When Kimeli, a young Maasai medical student, brings the tale with him on his visit home from the U.S., everyone is shocked to learn how 3,000 people died.
One of the elders asks, “What can we do for these poor people?” Kimeli asks only for a blessing, but his people do more. They invite a U.S. diplomat from the Nairobi embassy to visit the village for the greatest tribute they know, “because there is no nation so powerful it cannot be wounded, nor a people so small they cannot offer mighty comfort.” Ages 8 and up.
Ned’s New Home, by Kevin Tseng, $14.99. When his home starts to rot and leak apple juice, a worm named Ned turns to find alternative housing. After investigating and rejecting other fruity options, including a pear, a watermelon, blueberries and a kiwi, Ned is still looking when an avian Realtor takes him for a ride.
Luckily, Ned escapes. Will he find a satisfactory home on his own, without having to pay closing costs? Ages 2 to 4, plus new homeowners of any age.
