Beat the June Heat and Read

by Selene S. Vasquez

PICTURE BOOKS: AGES 6 THRU 8

Milo’s Hat Trick by Jon Agee. (Hyperion, unpaged, $15.95).

Milo the Magnificent is an untalented magician whose tricks get tangled up or botched altogether in a funny, crowd-pleasing manner. Will finding a rabbit for his bag of tricks enhance his amusing dilemma?

There Once Was a Man Named Michael Finnegan by Nadine Bernard Westcott. (Little Brown, 32 pp., $14.95).

This is an exuberant and preposterously silly traditional romp of a tattered, unshaven man and his grinning doggie companion. Wacky watercolor and ink illustrations make merry of poor Finnegan’s violin playing.

POETRY: AGES 6 THRU 8

Timothy Tunny Swallowed a Bunny by Bill Grossman. Illustrated by Kevin Hawkes. (HarperCollins, 32 pp., $14.95).

Eighteen slapstick poems resemble a literary version of The Three Stooges. Hawkes is the quintessential zany artist for these madcap and mischievous wordplays romping throughout the book.

NONFICTION: AGES 8 THRU 12

Shipwrecked! The True Adventures of a Japanese Boy by Rhoda Blumberg. (HarperCollins, 32 pp., $16.95).

Shipwrecked in 1841, little Manjiro was rescued by an American whaling ship, educated in New England, and amazingly, became an honored samurai upon returning home to Japan. This is an absorbing biography with vivid historical detail.

Selene Vasquez is a media specialist at Orange Brook Elementary School in Hollywood, Florida. She is formerly a children’s librarian for the New York Public Library.

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