Izzy has a big personality and she often gets in trouble. One day at recess she gets her friend, Zoe, in trouble again and this time Zoe is not as fast to forgive. Izzy doesn’t know what to do while she waits for Zoe to be her friend again. Izzy’s live-in nanny and single parent mom, help her navigate the struggles of not knowing if her friend will forgive her. Izzy’s mom decides that Izzy’s exuberance shows that she has a lot of love to give, so they adopt a puppy. Izzy relates to this to her own adoption story as told by her mom. This is a beginning chapter books with large type and black and white pictures.

Crackers is a dog who has a list of things to do: bark, nap, pee outside, sniff things and lives with a cat named Butters. One day their life is disrupted when their owner brings home a new puppy named Peanut. Peanut pees in the house, eats Crackers food, and keeps them up at night. Butter and Crackers try to get rid of Peanut, but they keep getting in trouble for the things Peanut does. One night Peanut walks out the front gate and gets lost. Crackers and Butter realize they miss Peanut and set out to find him. This graphic novel will have students laughing at the silly things the animals do and say. (Butter tells Peanut the toilet is a jacuzzi and the handle makes it spin.)

A little girl and a cat are playing when the cat gets sick. When the cat says it doesn’t feel well, the girl asks if the cat wants a hug. The cat does, so she hugs the cat. Then a series of animals follow saying they need a hug from the girl. The girl is liking the hugs less and less and the illustrations show her more and more bedraggled. She doesn’t feel well and the cat asks if she wants a hug which makes her feel better. The book seems like it could be great for tolerance and sticking up for oneself, but it gets a little muddled at the end.

In Kevin the Unicorn: Why Can’t We Be Bestie-Corns? a new unicorn moves in next door to Kevin and Kevin knows that they will be best friends. They try to be friends, but they just don’t like the same things. Eric likes clam juice and it is not Kevin’s favorite. Kevin wants to do something sporty, but Eric just couldn’t do it. They realize that they don’t have to be best friends, but they can still be friendly to each other. The illustrations are bright and colorful. The vocabulary and expressions are fun (flummoxed, great galloping glitter pants) and will make readers laugh.

This is a story of an acorn told in the style of The House That Jack Built. It starts out with the treehouse that Jill built and follows the acorn with different animals. The acorn is eventually planted by the squirrel and grows into a big tree that holds the treehouse that Jack built. The text is lyrical and rhyming and includes fun to say words like Hullabaloo and Pee-ew. The illustrations are bright with the landscape is in various shades of green and the animals are cartoonish. The human characters in the book are white.

What do you do if you work at a zoo? You might brush a hippos teeth, tickle a tapir, or pick up panda poop. Each page of this informational book looks at what zookeepers do for different animals at the zoo. Each page has an illustration in cut and torn paper collage, a simple statement in large, colorful font and 2-3 sentences describing what they do for that animal. The back matter includes a short bullet point list of what zookeepers do, zoo pros and cons, a zoo timeline, a list of the world’s top zoos and facts about the animals featured in the book.

Ollie couldn’t wait to go outside to play with her toy bunny. Finally the rain stopped and they went out to splash in the puddles. A wind came and a petal landed on the bunny’s nose which twitched and the bunny came alive. Ollie chases her bunny through the story on a great adventure until at last it is finally time to return home and her bunny becomes a toy again.

A chick wants to join the rocket club, but the sign says no chicks allowed. As she walks through the book, we meet the hippie chick, maker chick, baker chick, cool chicks and nerdy chicks. They all come together to build a rocket and send her to outer space because when we work together and include everyone, anything can happen.

Hector and Louie are best friends and they are writing a book together telling all the things they like to do. Throughout the book they keep starting the book over, until one friend lets a secret slip out and a fight starts. Now their book is about the worst friends in the universe. Hector and Louie soon realize that they miss each other and want to be friends again. I thought the beginning was cute and fun, but the end seemed too simplified of now we are friends again.

This rhythmical jazzy book is a biography of Sonny Rollins. Students might not be familiar with some of the references in this book, but it could be paired with other books on this topic (while reading it two instantly came to mind) and with the music itself. Sonny needs to take a break from the jazz scene, but he wants to keep playing his saxophone. He can’t find a place to play and finally plays on the Williamsburg Bridge. This inspires his next album called the bridge.