Whether bringing to life the legends of the mightiest Greek and Norse gods in their widely beloved collections of myths, or retelling Chekhov’s tale of a little lost dog as they do in Foxie, the d’Aulaires excelled at the arts of storytelling and illustration. Foxie’s tale, wonderful to look at and delightful to read, is certain to charm both young children and early readers. Poor Foxie! With her “head like a fox and her tail like a cinnamon roll” she is adorable enough to charm anyone. But all her young master wants to do is tease her—and he isn’t very good at remembering mealtime either. One day his pranks go too far when he lures his dog out onto the busy city streets with a tasty bone and loses her. Foxie is soon rescued by a roly-poly circus-animal trainer who spots her fl air for singing and adds her to his act, alongside a piano-playing cat and a strutting rooster. Opening night is full of surprises, though, and Foxie is overjoyed when she hears a familiar voice in the audience, calling out her name.

A lost dog's luck makes him fat and famous, but when given a chance he proves he still thinks there is no place like home.

This delightful storybook by the incomparable d'Aulaires, based on a poem by Hans Christian Andersen, will charm a whole new generation of little readers Don't count your chickens before they hatch, as the saying goes--but what about counting your eggs?! A woman with a good little house, a cat and a dog, and a fine hen who lays an egg every day (and even with a rooster who crows as if he'd laid the egg) sets off for town with a basket of fresh eggs. How much will she get for them? the woman wonders. Soon she is dreaming and scheming and beaming, counting the eggs and the coins they will fetch . . . and the hens the money will buy . . . and the eggs the new hens will lay! What bounty those eggs will bring her! She will buy two geese and a little lamb, which will give her wool . . . why not? Wait and see what happens in this playful take on a beloved Hans Christian Andersen poem. A true classic, Don't Count Your Chicks brings a timeless story to vivid life with all the old-world charm, humor, and brilliant colors that have made so many of the d'Aulaires' children's books perennial favorites.

In The Two Cars the celebrated husband and wife team of Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire, famous for their illustrated versions of Norse and Greek myths, offer young children a playful modern twist on the ancient fable of the tortoise and the hare. Two cars sit side by side in the same garage. One is fast, shiny, and ready to go; the other is a comfortable old jalopy, a little worse for wear but as reliable as can be. On a magic moonlit night, the doors of the garage swing open and they head out for a spin, each determined to prove that he is the “best car on the road.” Over hill and dale and roundabout they go, encountering—and narrowly missing—trains, trucks, wildlife, and even, in the form of a policeman on a motorcycle, the long arm of the law. Before the two cars’ nocturnal caper is over, each will have discovered the being the “best” is not so simple as you might suppose.

From Caldecott Award winner Chris Raschka, tales of unforgettable characters who live in a NYC apartment building “To the company of ur-New Yorkers like Stuart Little, Harriet the Spy, and Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, let me hold open the door for The Doorman’s Repose. A new favorite." —Gregory Maguire “….marvelously intriguing stories…” —Lemony Snicket Some of us look up at those craggy, mysterious apartment buildings found in the posher parts of New York City and wonder what goes on inside. The Doorman’s Repose collects ten stories about 777 Garden Avenue, one of the craggiest. The first story recounts the travails of the new doorman, who excels at all his tasks except perhaps the most important one—talking baseball. Others tell of a long-forgotten room, a cupid-like elevator, and the unlikely romance of a cerebral psychologist and a jazz musician, both of whom are mice. Because the animals talk and the machinery has feelings, these are children’s stories. Otherwise they are for anyone intrigued by what happens when many people, strangers or kin, live together under one roof.

A New York Review Children’s Collection Original An ALPHABET book? An ALBUM of old photos? We named it ALPHABETABUM. Here celebrated artists and authors Vladimir Radunsky and Chris Raschka put a delightful new old-fashioned spin on the alphabet book. Radunsky has selected portraits of children from his spectacular collection of antique black and-white photographs. Raschka has given the children names and written deliciously teasing rhymes about them. The result is ALPHABETABUM, a book of letters and pictures to which readers will happily return again and again both to look and to learn.

What is your favorite thing to do in the whole world? Whatever it is, odds are that you don’t like doing it as much as the elephant in this book enjoys smashing small cars. He’ll smash any small car that drives down his road. He smashes yellow cars, he smashes blue cars, he smashes red cars, all the while singing a special car-smashing song. Then one day a man comes to town and opens a small-car store right on the elephant’s road. You can probably guess what the elephant does next, but the real fun starts when the man turns the tables on the elephant—and his plan is a smashing success. Jean Merrill’s story of gleeful destruction, revenge, and conciliation is accompanied by Ronni Solbert’s colorful crayon drawings. Rarely has property damage looked so adorable.

Tiny Seacrow Island is one of hundreds of islands in the sparkling blue of the Baltic Sea. Though small, it has everything you’d want in an island: woods to wander in, flowers to pick, fish to catch, boats to sail in, all kinds of animals. But it doesn’t have very many young people. So when the four Melkerson kids and their father move into Carpenter’s Cottage one June day, they’re immediately welcomed by the resourceful islanders: Johan and Niklas Melkerson, at twelve and thirteen, are natural companions for adventurous Freddy and Teddy (girls exactly their age); dreamy Pelle, the baby of the family, gets up to trouble with bossy Tjorven and fanciful Stina; and ever-responsible Malin, who at nineteen looks after her scatterbrained father as well as her brothers, catches the eye of all the island’s young men. Before long Seacrow Island and Carpenter’s Cottage (tumbledown and leaky though it may be) have become a real home for the Melkersons. Seacrow Island is a remarkable story, filled with sweetness and sorrow, humor and suspense, and peopled with the vivid, unexpected, wonderfully winning characters we’ve come to expect from the creator of the unforgettable Pippi Longstocking.

Even if she has lived ten terrible years, terrible, horrible Edie really isn’t terrible and horrible at all, but rather one of the most charming and engaging and gutsy children in American children’s fiction. It’s true of course that Edie does get into—and not always without it being at least a little bit her fault—some pretty terrible and horrible scrapes, and that sometimes she will sulk, but these are the kinds of things that happen to the kid sister of two snooty boys and one fancy-pants girl, not to mention having to deal with the distraction of two half sisters who are no better than babies. Edie’s father and stepmother have headed to Europe for the summer, and though the rest of the family can look forward to good times at a beloved summer house on the sea, Edie still has to fight to hold her own. Adventures on a sailboat and on an island, and the advent of a major hurricane and what Edie takes to be a military coup, all come to a climax when Edie solves the mystery of who stole the neighbor’s jewels and saves, at least for one day, the day. This story of Edie and the other members of the Cares family may remind readers of Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons, except that Edie has an experimental, even anarchic streak that is all her terrible, horrible own.

An Easter story for young readers. This is the tale of a little church mouse named Cheerful who lives in the city with his parents; his brother, Solemnity; and his sisters, Faith and Hope. Cheerful and his brother and sisters spend their time frolicking in the rainbow shadows cast by the church’s stained-glass windows and dining on the crumbs of wedding cakes. But while Solemnity, Faith, and Hope are happy to live in the bustling city, Cheerful’s favorite spot has always been the greenest patches of light under the windows. His dream is to settle in the country, and one day he bids his family farewell and sets off on an adventure. Palmer Brown’s intricate filigreed drawings turn this sweet, simple story into an instrument of enchantment as glorious as a rose window and as intimate as the spun-sugar Easter egg that will finally carry Cheerful to his pastoral home.