Review #58: Millie's Marvellous Hat

Gracie (age 9):  Millie's Marvellous Hat...
Isaac (age 11):  By Satoshi Kitamura.  This book is about a girl named Millie - and you've probably figured that out already because of the title.  She sees a hat in the store window.  But the hat is $599.99.
Gracie:  Not counting tax.
Isaac:  So the store manager gave her a special hat instead.
Lily (age 6):  A free one.
Gracie:  Millie doesn't have anything in her purse, so the store owner gives her an invisible hat that can be anything.
Isaac:  He's really nice - probably a different hat store owner wouldn't have done that.
Dad:  Which do you think was better?  The $599 one, or the free imaginary one?
Gracie:  The imaginary one.
Isaac:  I would never pay almost $600 for a hat.  If I had that much money, I would use it all on Legos.
Dad:  So what happens next...
Gracie:  Millie goes for a walk.  She sees a cake store, and her hat turns into a cake.  14 cakes on top of each other...  I just counted them.  Then she sees flowers and her hat becomes flowery.
Isaac:  Then when Millie was at the park, she noticed everyone had a hat of their own.  And at the end, her parents had hats too.  The dad had a giant penguin hat.
Elijah (age 4):  I like that penguin hat.
Dad:  Millie had a pretty good imagination.  Who else does?
Gracie:  Sa-tushy Ki-mostra has a good imagination.
Isaac:  It's actually... "Satoshi Kitamura."
Dad:  What do his pictures look like?
Isaac:  How do we explain the art in this book?  Abstract-ish?
Gracie:  He has never used a completely straight line in this whole book.
Isaac:  Well, they are straight.
Dad:  The lines are just all at odd angles to each other.
Isaac:  And they are splotchy.
Gracie:  Thick and thin lines.
Dad:  He varies the line width.
Gracie:  And Millie really pops out.  All the colors are dull except for Millie.  She's bright!
Dad:  What was your favorite hat in the book?  Mine was Millie's peacock hat.
Gracie:  It must have taken him an hour to draw that peacock hat.
Isaac:  I'm not drawing that.
Lily:  It had too much feathers.  That hat would have knocked everyone over.
Dad:  You think it would have actually knocked people down... even though it was imaginary?
Isaac:  I think the animals in the book could see the hats.  Well, the dog saw the cake hat - I know that much.
Gracie:  Its tongue was hanging out.
Dad:  How about you guys?  What was your favorite hat in the book?
Isaac:  My favorite hat was the vacuum cleaner one - that was cool.  That one and the Titanic hat were cool.
Gracie:  I have two favorite hats.  I like the peacock hat before it opens its feathers because it's the prettiest shade of blue in the whole world.  And I also like the Mommy's hat at the end.  It's really pretty.  It's flowers.
Dad:  How about you, Lily?
Gracie:  I know which one Lily would like!  This duck hat.
Lily:  That is a goose.
Dad:  Actually I think it's a swan.
Lily:  Well, I want the little baby swan hat.
Gracie:  Look - there's a safety cone hat.
Isaac:  Awesome!  I want the safety cone hat!
Gracie:  And look -- she's tall and skinny, so she's got a giraffe hat.  And he's short and chubby, so he has a rhinoceros hat.
Dad:  Wow... the hats match the people...  I never even noticed this!  I thought they were random.  But she's balancing packages so she has a hat with a seal balancing a ball.  Oh and look - she's pregnant so she has a kangaroo with a pouch...
Gracie:  And he's very distinguished and rich...
Isaac:  And he's fast like a race car driver...
Lily:  And they are fighting...
Dad:  I never would have noticed that - you guys are so smart!
Elijah:  Look - that's a cool hat!
Dad:  That would be a fun game, wouldn't it?  When we're all in the car waiting for mom to come out of the grocery store, we could imagine different hats on the people walking by based on their personalities.  Let's try it out...  What kind of hat do you think baby sister Evie would have?
Gracie:  A bullhorn!
Isaac:  No -- a hat with oranges!  She loves oranges.
Elijah:  I want a toothpaste marvelous hat!
Dad:  I could do that...  I'd be happy to put toothpaste on your head...
Isaac:  Elijah would have a toilet hat.
Dad:  Ha ha -- yes, we have trouble with Elijah's 4-year-old potty mouth, don't we.
Elijah:  YEAH!  A toilet hat!!!
Dad:  How about mom?
Gracie:  A vacuum cleaner.  Because she feels like she's the only one in the house who cleans up.
Lily:  No!  She would have a picture of her family.
Dad:  Yeah - she loves you guys.  That's one of her most distinguishing features.  How about me -- do you have a hat for me?
Gracie:  A pencil hat!
Dad:  Cool.  I would wear a pencil hat if there was one.
Isaac:  I wonder what the author's hat looks like.
Gracie:  Probably a Millie hat!
Dad:  So he would have a hat of a girl wearing a hat?
Gracie:  I think he should write another book about Millie.  Millie's Marvelous Shoes.  Or Millie's Marvelous Mustache!  Ha ha hahh hah...

Isaac's Marvelous Hat

Elijah's Marvelous Hat

Lily's Marvelous Hat

Gracie's Marvelous Hat

Author/Illustrator: Satoshi Kitamura
Published, 2009: Andersen Press
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Review #57: The Phantom Tollbooth

Dad:  Our latest bedtime storybook we worked through was "The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Juster.  Do you guys remember enough about The Phantom Tollbooth to talk about it?
Lily (age 6):  First, I have to tell everyone something.  This is a chapter book.
Dad:  You are right.  But there were pictures in it too.
Lily:  Yes.
Dad:  The pictures were by Jules Feiffer.  He's a pretty famous illustrator.  Is there anything you want to say about the pictures.
Gracie (age 9):  They were good.
Dad:  Alrighty then.
Lily:  The story is about a kid named Milo.
Gracie:  At the beginning of the book, he is the most bored kid on earth.  He has a thousand toys that he's never ever ever in his whole life used before.  But he thinks he has nothing to do.
Isaac (age 11):  Then this package comes, and in it there is a tollbooth.
Dad:  Do you guys even know what a tollbooth is?
Isaac:  Yeah.  When you go into a different state there are tollbooths, and you have to pay money.  In case you wreck the roads and stuff.
Gracie:  So Milo puts a coin in, and he takes a little car... and I don't know where he got the car... and he drives through the tollbooth.  And he goes to this crazy world.
Lily:  His room just had a red car in it.
Gracie:  I think it was a toy car he could drive.  A blue car.
Isaac:  No it was red.
Gracie:  Blue.
Dad:  Well, the pictures in the book were black and white...
Lily:  It was red.
Dad:  Let's check the story and see what it says...
Isaac:  Blue is not a good color for a car.
Gracie:  Blue is the perfect color for a 3 foot car.
Dad:  Here we go... Here's the answer... Ready?  The book says, "He looked glumly at all the things he owned... the small electric automobile he hadn't driven in months--or was it years..."  So what's the answer?
Lily:  Nothing.
Gracie:  It's blue!
Dad:  The answer is: The book doesn't give us a color.  It's whatever color it was in your imagination.
Isaac:  Red.
Gracie:  Isaac, schwatreuse would be a better color on that car.
Isaac:  There's no such thing as "schwa-treuse."
Dad:  You mean chartreuse?  I think you guys need some kind of "truce."  Since the author doesn't tell us in the book, then he intentionally wanted to leave it to your imagination.  Agreed?  It's blue to one person, red to the other, and that's okay.
Lily:  Purple.
Gracie & Isaac:  Purple!?!
Dad:  Okay, moving on...
Gracie:  Milo goes to this crazy world.  And he goes on a special mission to save Princesses Rhyme and Reason.  And he meets, like, 100 different crazy characters on the way.
Isaac:  Everything had become chaos, and everyone was fighting.  So they needed Rhyme and Reason back.
Lily:  Milo meets Tock.
Gracie:  My favorite character!
Lily:  He goes tick tick tick tick tick...  Tock is a dog with a clock on his side.
Gracie:  A watchdog!
Lily:  He is comforting.
Dad:  Tock is a good friend to Milo, isn't he.
Gracie:  If I had to have a dog with a giant watch attached to his stomach, I would definitely want Tock.  He's always trying to protect Milo.  And whenever he gets really mad or excited, his alarm goes off.
Dad:  Do you know what a "pun" is?
Isaac:  A word joke?
Dad:  Yep.  There were lots of pun-characters in this book, weren't there?  Like "watchdog."
Gracie:  A dog with a clock.
Dad:  And we know what a "spelling bee" is in real life.  But what was it in the book?
Lily:  A bee that spells everything.
Dad:  Okay, we've described Milo and Tock.  Who was the third main character?
Lily:  The Humbug.  He is a black bug.  And he has a coat.  He is full of himself.  He's always like, "Look at me!  Look what I did!"
Gracie:  He's mostly focused on himself.
Isaac:  The Humbug agrees with everyone.  He's focused on not getting into trouble and on looking like the smart one.
Gracie:  And he's a big scaredy.
Dad:  What were the two main lands they visited?
Lily:  The alphabet place and the number place.
Gracie:  Dictionopolis and Digitopolis.  And the two kings were Azaz and the Mathemagician.
Dad:  So, we described our three heroes.  But there are sooooo many other crazy folks they meet on their adventure... there's no way we can cover them all.  How about each of you pick just one to tell us about.  Tell us one favorite each.
Gracie:  There was this kid named Alec who floats.  He grows down instead of up.  His head starts from how high up he's going to be when he's an adult, and his feet grow down to the floor.  But his head stays the same height his whole life.
Dad:  And his family thinks that makes more sense.
Isaac:  Because then you can always have the same perspective.
Dad:  We grow up, so our perspective is always changing.  His stays the same.
Gracie:  But what if he wanted to see a little tiny pebble when he was only 3 years old?  Then he would be like, "I can't reach the ground... I can't see a pebble, I want to see a pebble..."
Dad:  What character do you want to tell us about, Isaac?
Isaac:  I liked Canby.  He's this guy who is everything.  He says "I'm as tall as can be, I'm as small as can be..."
Gracie:  "I'm as skinny as can be, I'm as brave as can be..."
Dad:  Do you remember where they met him?
Isaac:  Conclusions.  That's an island.
Dad:  And how do you get there?
Gracie:  You always jump to Conclusions.
Isaac:  It only happens when you decide something without knowing the facts.
Dad:  Your turn, Lily.
Lily:  I want to tell you about the number person.  The Mathemagician.  Milo asked him, "What is the biggest number?"  And it was a giant 3.  Then Milo said "No, no, no, I mean the longest number."  And it was a big looooong 8.
Dad:  Great.  Any way to summarize the book as a whole?
Gracie:  It's crazy.  It's so crazy.
Dad:  And did they ever save those princesses they were off to find?
Isaac:  I'll just leave that so you have to read the book.  I'm not going to say what happens, because everyone has to read the book.

daddy, mommy, and baby watchdogs, by Lily

Tock and Milo meet the princesses, by Gracie


more crazy characters, by Isaac

Author: Norton Juster
Illustrator: Jules Feiffer
Published, 1961: Random House
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2009 Readers' Pick

How would you like to help pick a title for Bookie Woogie review?  Now's your chance!  Isaac, Grace, Lily, and I have taken turns picking. From time to time our mail carrier picks one for us.  We've even let Hungarians and New Zealanders have a go.  Now it's time for our first "Readers' Pick."

Our posts alternate week to week between new releases and old favorites.  Well, 2010 is now upon us.  We have two last '09 reviews all set to post on Jan 25 and Feb 8.  But you have a chance to help pick a third before we move on to highlighting 2010 titles.

Every book we've reviewed on this site is a book we think you should take a look at.  Here are nine more.  These are nine '09 books we loved and WOULD have reviewed as well if we had the ability to post more often...  or if years had twice as many weeks in them.

Leave a comment on this post telling us which of the books below you would like us to review.  Maybe it's a title you love too, and you want to see what the Z-Kids have to say.  Maybe it's a title you've never heard of, and you'd like to learn more about it.  We'll let the voting run 'til the end of January.  Whichever story gets the most comments wins a Bookie Woogie review on Feb 22!

Comments Commence!




Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy
by David Soman and Jacky Davis



The Frogs and Toads All Sang
by Arnold Lobel and Adrianne Lobel



Crazy Hair
by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean



Little Boat
by Thomas Docherty



How Robin Saved Spring
by Debbie Ouellet and Nicoletta Ceccoli



Magic Box
by Katie Cleminson



The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau
by Dan Yaccarino



Chicken Cheeks
by Michael Ian Black and Kevin Hawkes



Redwoods
by Jason Chin


Update:  and the Readers' Pick is: "Crazy Hair" by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean...  You can check out our review here.

Review #56: The Cuckoo's Haiku

Dad:  "The Cuckoo's Haiku..."  That's hard to say out loud, isn't it?
Lily (age 6):  It's a tongue twister!
Dad:  This is "The Cuckoo's Haiku" by Michael J. Rosen, illustrated by Stan Fellows.
Gracie (age 9):  This book is all haikus.
Dad:  Who can tell me what a haiku is.
Gracie:  It's a poem where you have to have 5 syllables, then 7 syllables, then 5 syllables.
Dad:  Does it have to rhyme?
Gracie:  No.
Dad:  "Poem" doesn't always mean "lines that end the same."  Poems are just when you write with rules in mind... when you fit words into a pattern.  Maybe the pattern is made of the last words in the lines rhyming.  But that's not the only kind of pattern.
Lily:  Five, seven, five.
Dad:  Can you describe this book?  We don't really have a plot to explain.
Isaac (age 11):  Haikus about birds.
Dad:  Well, that about sums it up...
Isaac:  Yup!
Gracie:  They are fun haikus.
Isaac:  They are cool.  They are very descriptive.
Gracie:  It doesn't just say "This is a gray bird / It can fly very high up / This is the end now."
Dad:  Ha ha - yes, that would have been a haiku...
Gracie:  But it would be boring.  The ones in this book are not boring.  Like the bluebird one goes: "on a staff of wires / blue notes inked from April skies / truly, spring's first song."  He made the poem awesome.
Isaac:  It's a very descriptive way of explaining birds.
Dad:  What do you like better, the paintings or the poems?
Gracie:  They are equally matched.  They are both stinking awesome!
Lily:  Awesomely stinking awesome!
Dad:  We talked about Michael J. Rosen's poems a bit already.  Tell me about Stan Fellow's illustrations.
Gracie:  He paints cool.  Isaac can paint birds that way!
Lily:  And when the artist drew something and changed his mind, he didn't even erase it.
Gracie:  But that makes it cool!
Lily:  He wanted to draw a grasshopper, and then he was like, "Nah, I don't want to do it anymore."
Dad:  So he left that part of the painting unfinished, huh.
Lily:  He didn't even finish drawing this bird.  He was like, "I want to color this bird in... naw... I don't want to color it anymore."
Gracie:  And he didn't even erase that unfinished part.  He doesn't care.  Whatever parts he wants to draw, he just draws.
Dad:  And he uses watercolors.  You guys like using watercolors don 't you?
Lily:  Yeah!  And sometimes he goes "splat-ly."  Sometimes it looks like he just whacks with the paintbrush so the paints go all over the paper.
Isaac:  He also puts all kinds of little pictures around randomly.
Gracie:  And he puts them in panels, panels, panels.
Lily:  This picture is on the same page as this picture, but he just put a square around it.
Gracie:  That's called a panel.
Dad:  Did you have a favorite page in this book?
Gracie:  Yes.  I'll find it.  I like this one.
Dad:  The Cedar Waxwing...
Gracie:  Yeah.  I like this part right here.  The part in the panel with the berry in his mouth.  I want to hang this up.  If we ever get 100 copies of this book, can I have one and cut this part out?  It's so pretty.
Isaac:  I like the turkey one.  It's just cool.
Dad:  That's my favorite too.
Gracie:  It would be better if the bird was the prettiest bird in the whole world instead of just a turkey.
Dad:  Turkeys might be goofy looking, but sometimes the goofy animals are more fun to look at than the pretty ones.
Lily:  I learned that turkeys' footprints look like arrows -- but the turkeys move the opposite way of the arrows.  So you can tell where a turkey is when it runs away.
Dad:  You just follow the arrows backward.
Lily:  Yep.
Dad:  We really liked the apple tree poem too...
Gracie:  Oh yeah, that was funny.
Dad:  To what did they compare the apple tree?
Gracie:  An actual apple.
Lily:  With "apple seed" birds.
Gracie:  If you flip the book upside down on the page with the white tree and the crows, the tree looks like an apple.
Lily:  A sliced open apple.
Gracie:  The black crows look like the seeds in the middle.
Dad:  So did this book inspire you?  Are you all creative and poetic now?  Do you have ideas flowing out of your brains like melted butter running down toast?
Gracie:  Dad, that was awesome!
Isaac:  No.  It's more like bricks stuck in my head that won't come out.
Dad:  There you go!  That sounds poetic too!  Just throw it into a haiku... 5, 7, 5.  "Bricks stuck in my head / Those darn thoughts will not come out / My poem is stuck."
Isaac:  You're good at haikus.  See, I could never do it that fast.
Dad:  Does anyone have a descriptive way to summarize the book?
Isaac:  Like, make up a haiku about the book?
Dad:  Yeah.  That's what Michael J. Rosen does.  He doesn't just say, "This is how it is."  He paints with words.  He makes a painting in our imagination, and his words are the brush.
Isaac:  How do you do that?  You are good at this stuff!
Dad:  How would you describe this book poetically?
Lily:  This book is like a bird.  Because they are both beautiful.
Gracie:  This book reminds me of music.  It's really pretty.  It's really graceful, and it's got its own rhythm.
Dad:  Good job.  Very poetic of you.

Just like a whistle
Hear my song both far and near
Turns frowns upside down

                        - picture and haiku by Lily

Changing dark to light

Two wild fires in the still night:
Searching yellow eyes

                        - picture and haiku by Isaac


Sweetest little bird,
Like cherries and strawberries
A feast for the eyes

                        - picture and haiku by Gracie

Author: Michael J. Rosen
Illustrator: Stan Fellows
Published, 2009: Candlewick Press
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Review #55: Ignis

Gracie (age 9):  Smell my lips, Dad.  I just put lip gloss on.  Smell my lips.
Dad:  I don't want to smell your lips.
Isaac (age 11):  No one wants to smell your lips.
Gracie:  Lily, you smell my lips.
Dad:  Let's not smell lips...  let's review books.  Isaac, you picked today's book.  Why don't you tell everyone what we're reading.
Isaac:  "Ignis" by Gina Wilson, illustrated by P.J. Lynch.
Lily (age 6):  Ignis is a dragon who does not breathe fire.
Dad:  Is he okay with that?
Lily:  No.  He says he's not a real dragon because dragons have to breathe fire.  Wah, wah, wah.
Gracie:  He's the fastest, he's the strongest, he can fly the highest.
Isaac:  But he can't seem to breathe fire.
Lily:  Then he goes off to find fire.  He meets a hippo.  They swim.  Also he meets a parrot.  They fly.  And he meets a little girl.  Cara.  And the girl gives him tea parties!  Hee hee!
Dad:  Hey -- did you know there's a writing principle called "The Rule of Three."  Like: hippo, parrot, girl...  Authors will often do three variations on things in their stories.  So if you write a story about pigs that meet a wolf... you'll have three of them - one for straw, one for sticks, and one for bricks.  Two pigs wouldn't seem like enough.  Four or five pigs would start getting too long and boring.  Three is just long enough to set a pattern in place.  Three is the magic number.
Isaac:  Yeah.  I never knew about that, but it makes sense.
Dad:  Like in "The Hiccupotamus," how many other characters did the hippo meet?
Gracie:  Threeeee!
Dad:  Elephant, centipede, rhinoceros.  That's the Rule of Three.  So when you guys write stories, you can keep that in mind.  A character might try three different solutions to a problem or meet three different people.  What are some other examples of the Rule of Three?  How about Goldilocks?
Isaac:  Three bears.
Dad:  And there's another Rule of Three hiding in that story too: Porridge, Chair, Bed.  What else... 3 Billy Goats Gruff.  And in Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack takes the gold, the goose, and the harp.  Rule of Three, baby.
Gracie:  Do videos count?
Dad:  Sure.
Gracie:  Then I have one.  "Dora the Explorer."
Dad:  Oh yeah... when they check the map, they always have three places to remember... every time.
Gracie:  Always three.  ALWAYS.  No matter what.
Isaac:  Nu-uh!  I saw one with four.  Uh...  Not that I watch it.
Dad:  Alright, we've spent plenty of time on the Rule of Three.
Isaac:  Yeah, it kind of got boring.
Gracie:  We should have given three examples.
Dad:  Where did we leave off?  Ignis meets a little girl named Cara...
Gracie:  She's lucky.
Isaac:  It would be scary to meet a dragon, but it would be cool.
Gracie:  But they have tea parties, of all things.  The girl has a tea party with a dragon!  I wouldn't have tea parties and ice cream.  I would go out flying or something.
Dad:  I guess Ignis wants to do human-y things.
Isaac:  If you think about it, it would be terrifying to meet a dragon.
Gracie:  He would light my campfire.
Isaac:  I would?
Gracie:  No!  My dragon would.
Lily:  My dragon would be a "she."
Dad:  If a dragon just came up to you out of nowhere, you wouldn't get to pick what it was.
Lily:  Well, I would want my dragon to be a "she."  My dragon would do everything with me.
Dad:  If a dragon ever bursts through our door... go get your tea set.
Isaac:  I would grab a knife and throw it at it.
Dad:  Good thing Isaac wasn't in this book.  Ignis would have met a sad end.
Isaac:  Actually, I'd probably just be stunned and then run away.
Gracie:  I would put a muzzle on it, and then I would give it a hug.
Isaac:  What about its tail?
Gracie:  I'd tie its tail to its neck, put gloves on it, and then give it a hug.
Dad:  So you would tie him and glove him and muzzle him...  I bet he's going to love getting a hug from you.
Isaac:  I would run up to my room, get my homemade bullwhip, and run away as fast as I can.  And if it starts chasing me, I'd start whipping it.
Dad:  Man, you guys are all so "kind" to dragons.  This book would have been very different if Cara did all that stuff to Ignis.
Gracie:  She doesn't even have a whip.
Isaac:  I would only do it in self defense.
Gracie:  I changed my mind.  I would just give it a hug.  I'm not scared about the fire.  Unless he burns my head off.  Then I would freak out.
Dad:  Alright, we got really sidetracked...  back to Ignis...
Lily:  Ignis felt fire inside him.  Then he goes to a volcano.
Isaac:  It had blown up 100 years ago, but the last spark comes out, and he accidentally swallows it when he is crying.  Then he starts breathing fire.  Tons and tons and tons of fire.
Lily:  He spit fire and it flew everywhere.  It was a happy, happy ever after.
Dad:  How did he find his fire?
Isaac:  By crying.
Dad:  So the moral of the story is... Crying fixes everything.
Isaac:  Ha ha!  Yeah!
Dad:  Do you think there is a moral?
Isaac:  Don't complain. Things take time.
Dad:  I like the fact that Ignis didn't solve the problem all on his own, but neither did someone else fix it for him.  It was a combination of the two.  He needed what was inside him plus some outside help.
Gracie:  Did a girl write this book?
Dad:  Yep.  Gina Wilson wrote it.
Gracie:  I thought Gina must be a girl's name.  Gina is also my pet webkins giraffe and my next door neighbor.
Dad:  Ah -- Rule of Three!  The three Ginas: neighbor girl, pet giraffe, and author.  Maybe you should write a story about their adventures.
Lily:  Everything is three!
Dad:  What did you think of the illustrations?
Lily:  I like the pictures because they are detailed.  They look like realistic pop-out dragons.
Isaac:  The illustrator makes such cool dragons.
Dad:  He sure does.  P.J. Lynch is my favorite living illustrator.  And out of all his books, I like "Ignis" best.
Lily:  It looks like 3D popping out.
Dad:  How do you think he makes it dimensional?
Isaac:  The backgrounds are kind of blurry, but then the dragon is super detailed, so it pops off.
Dad:  It's also the way he uses light and shadows.  Instead of filling the shapes in flat, he makes things look rounded with light and shadow.
Lily:  That is so amazing.
Dad:  Do you think he had to observe real dragons to draw them so well?
Gracie:  That would be awesome.
Lily:  He made them up.  Because dragons aren't real.
Gracie:  Don't say that or one will burn your head off in the night.
Lily:  Daddy, are dragons real?
Dad:  Now, there are two "flying" images in this book.  One looks like a fast crazy flight and one looks calm and peaceful.  How did he do that?
Lily:  Cool colors and hot colors.
Gracie:  On the one where everything is peaceful and quiet there are cool colors.  Blue and purple.
Dad:  And what makes this one with the parrot exciting?
Gracie:  Bright, hot colors.  Those colors are freakin' bright.
Lily:  They make me feel wild and crazy.
Gracie:  I really like the illustrator.
Isaac:  He does awesome pictures.
Dad:  I love P.J. Lynch.
Gracie:  Who?
Dad:  P.J. Lynch.  He did the pictures.
Gracie:  Peanutbutter and Jelly?
Dad:  Great... P.J.?  Peanutbutter and Jelly Lynch?
Gracie:  Peanutbutter and Jelly LUNCH!  P.J. Lunch!
Dad:  I apologize, Mr...
Gracie:  Mr. Peanutbutter and Jelly!
Dad:  I sincerely apologize, Mr. honorable best living artist in the world, for my goofy little daughter...
Gracie:  Hah ha ha ha...
Dad:  One day some little weirdie kid is going to call you "Grapes."  Amity Grapes instead of Amity Grace.
Gracie:  Awesome!

Ignis breathing fire, by Grapie

Cara and Ignis, by Lily

Ignis flying, by Isaac

Author: Gina Wilson
Illustrator: P.J. Lynch
Watch P.J. Lynch paint a dragon from one of his other books
Published, 2001: Candlewick Press
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