It’s one thing to feel like an alien on your first day of school. It’s another thing to be one.Click-Clack Waddle-Waddle Dot-Dot Dewey Dew is a shy blue creature whose one enormous eye sheds a few quiet dorfs as his mother flies their spaceship toward Earth. Dewey feels out of place at Ms. Brightsun’s School for Little Learners. Earth words feel strange and “hard in his mouth.” The
clothes don’t exactly fit well (“Earth socks drooped around his hunklets!”). And though the kids
are different colors, Dewey is the only blue student there. In the end, a singl...

 
Working his usual magic, dePaola illustrates this gentle good-night story with the characters Pierrot and his redheaded child. Waiting for the moon to rise, the two walk through the meadow towards home. They observe robins returning to the nest for bedtime and a mama sheep hurrying her lambs home as the sun goes away. Simple rhyming text tells the story: “The moon’s almost here. / Mama duck drifts to shore. / Ducklings swim after: / One, two, three, four.” As father and child return home, fireflies appear, and the pair, along with their dog and kitten, we...

A young ninja seeks a worthy opponent, but his family is too busy to play.Chung (Ninja!, 2014) returns with a second comic-book-style tale about lovable, freckled-faced ninja Maxwell. Ready to tackle a challenger, Maxwell seeks an adversary in one of his family members. His mother is preparing dinner. His younger sister, Cassy, would rather play with her blocks. His father absentmindedly agrees to play hide-and-seek with him but forgets to look for Maxwell. Frustrated and bored, Maxwell meditates to find inner peace—unsuccessfully. When his mother calls him...