Books in The New York Review Children's Collection series

Father has had a long hard day at work. A sorely trying day indeed. He wants to sit down and put his feet up and rest. But what does he find when he arrives home? Commotion, consternation, confusion, chaos rule! How to get to the bottom of it? How to restore some semblance of proper order?The investigation, reluctantly begun, expands in widening circles to take in the whole family, as finger points to pointing finger. Perhaps everyone is to blame? Perhaps to set things straight everyone just needs to sit down, say sorry, and start over again?That family life is just that simple and never quite that simple is the message Russell and Lillian Hoban, the creators of such classics as Bread and Jam for Frances, A Little Sister for Frances, and The Little Brute Family, bring alive in this cleverly fashioned and heartwarmingly illustrated tale of a house in uproar.

A time-travel story that is both a poignant exploration of human identity and an absorbing tale of suspense.It’s natural to feel a little out of place when you’re the new kid, but when Charlotte Makepeace wakes up after her first night at boarding school, she’s baffled: everyone thinks she’s a girl called Clare Mobley, and even more shockingly, it seems she has traveled forty years back in time to 1918. In the months that follow, Charlotte wakes alternately in her own time and in Clare’s. And instead of having only one new set of rules to learn, she also has to contend with the unprecedented strangeness of being an entirely new person in an era she knows nothing about. Her teachers think she’s slow, the other girls find her odd, and, as she spends more and more time in 1918, Charlotte starts to wonder if she remembers how to be Charlotte at all. If she doesn’t figure out some way to get back to the world she knows before the end of the term, she might never have another chance.

A book of creative metamorphosis and stunning visuals that will bend children's imaginations and appeal to all ages. "One of my own personal childhood favorites..." --Brian SelznickThirteen is no ordinary picture book. It is book of visual and conceptual revolutions, metamorphoses, and narratives that swallow their own tails. In thirteen illustrated stories, plus "a preview of coming attractions," nothing less than the birth of the world, its duration, death, and rebirth occurs, in thirteen arresting and evolving tableaus, involving a sinking ship, a play, a leaf and caterpillar, a card trick, swans, a worm, Cinderella, the alphabet, paper magic, pyramids, a getting-thin-and-getting-fat-again dance, the fall and rise of civilization, and a countdown. This is not a book you read from beginning to end, so much as one you enter into, are absorbed by and transformed, like the thirteen tableaus themselves.

By the author of the classic The Snow Goose, a heartbreaking story about a young girl and her most unusual cat, who has magical powers that save her owner's life.Seven-year-old Mary adores her ginger cat, Thomasina, and is crushed when Thomasina falls sick, and Mary’s father, a grim, inflexible man who is the town vet, decrees that the only thing to be done is to put Thomasina down. Mary refuses to speak to her father, and then she herself contracts a life-threatening disease. In the meantime, however, Thomasina has been rescued—by the mysterious Lori, the Red Witch of the glen. Thomasina is now Tabitha, the descendant of an Egyptian goddess, and she is coming back to seek revenge! Thomasina, like Jenny of The Abandoned, Gallico’s other great feline heroine (Jenny is Thomasina’s great-aunt), tells her own story in her own way, witty, charming, divine, and sometimes as sharp as an unsheathed claw. Thomasina is a cat for the ages. Thomasina is a sheer delight.

London hasn’t been kind to Peter, a lonely boy whose parents are always out at parties, and though Peter would love to have a cat for company, his nanny won’t hear of it. One day, as Peter is walking out the door, he sees a truck bearing down on a tabby. Dashing out to save the cat, he is struck by the oncoming truck himself. Everything is different when Peter comes to: He has fur, whiskers, and claws; he has become a cat himself! But London isn’t any kinder to cats than it is to children. Jennie, a savvy stray who takes charge of Peter, knows that all too well. Jennie schools young Peter in the ways of cats, including how to sniff out a nice napping spot, the proper way to dine on mouse, and the single most important tactic a cat can learn: “When in doubt, wash.” Jennie and Peter will face many challenges—and not all of them are from the dangerous outside world—in their struggle to find a place that is truly home.

A New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book of the Year. In Arm in Arm, Remy Charlip, the great children’s book author and illustrator, is at his most playful, his zaniest, funniest, and cleverest. He rewrites the rules of riddles, tongue twisters, puns, and performance-based play, or rather, throws all rules out the window. Some pages require turning the book completely around, 360 degrees. A magnifying glass may also be useful. It is a book for kids of all ages.

Peewee’s in the box! Peewee the dog doesn’t know any tricks, “not a single one not even how to roll over not even how to shake hands but never mind he is so teeny weeny that everybody loves him,” the clown, the fat lady, the thin man, the huge tall giant, the strong baby, the acrobats, the elephants, and all the other amazing performers in the wonderful circus of the man with the quite tall red hat. But then something unexpected happens that threatens to bring Peewee’s time under the Big Top to an end.Now Open the Box is a beautiful example of the art of Dorothy Kunhardt, the author of the timeless classic Pat the Bunny and the pioneering picture book Junket Is Nice. Here Kunhardt speaks with wonderfully reassuring directness to children’s hopes and fears while making magic out of the simplest things.

A time-travel story that is both a poignant exploration of human identity and an absorbing tale of suspense.It's natural to feel a little out of place when you're the new girl, but when Charlotte Makepeace wakes up after her first night at boarding school, she's baffled: everyone thinks she's a girl called Clare Mobley, and even more shockingly, it seems she has traveled forty years back in time to 1918. In the months to follow, Charlotte wakes alternately in her own time and in Clare's. And instead of having only one new set of rules to learn, she also has to contend with the unprecedented strangeness of being an entirely new person in an era she knows nothing about. Her teachers think she's slow, the other girls find her odd, and, as she spends more and more time in 1918, Charlotte starts to wonder if she remembers how to be Charlotte at all. If she doesn't figure out some way to get back to the world she knows before the end of the term, she might never have another chance.

“What are you doing, dear?”“It’s a secret.”“Secrets are better if you share them a little. So tell Mother why you look so sad on Christmas Eve.”“I am wondering what to give—someone—for Christmas.”So begins the story of a little mouse’s search for a very special gift for a very special person. Nothing seems just right until the little mouse realizes that the best present of all is already at hand. Palmer Brown has given us something special for Christmas—or any day—an entrancingly lovely story, filled with the true spirit of the holiday season.

Wickedly funny and delightfully sad, Three Ladies Beside the Sea is a tale of love found, love lost, and love never-ending. Edward Gorey’s off-kilter Edwardian maidens are the perfect accompaniment to Rhoda Levine’s lilting rhymes.The place is remote:Three houses beside the sea.The Characters are Few:Laughing Edith of Ecstasy,Edith so happy and gay.Smiling Catherine of Compromise,She smiles her life away.And then there is Alice of Hazard,A dangerous life leads she.The question in the plot is quite simple:Why is Alice up in a tree?The answer can be discovered:Edith and Catherine do.

In English for the first time, a wild and darkly funny book that combines Surrealist painter Leonora Carringon's fantastical writing and illustrations for childrenThe maverick surrealist Leonora Carrington was an extraordinary painter and storyteller who loved to make up stories and draw pictures for her children. She lived much of her life in Mexico, and her sons remember sitting in a big room whose walls were covered with images of wondrous creatures, towering mountains, and ferocious vegetation while she told fabulous and funny tales. That room was later whitewashed, but some of its wonders were preserved in the little notebook that Carrington called The Milk of Dreams. John, who has wings for ears, Humbert the Beautiful, an insufferable kid who befriends a crocodile and grows more insufferable yet, and the awesome Janzamajoria are all to be encountered in The Milk of Dreams, a book that is as unlikely, outrageous, and dreamy as dreams themselves.

It’s bad news when you wake up in the morning and find you’ve lost your head, especially if it’s an especially agreeable and handsome head, but there you go, such things happen. In any case, the man who loses his head in The Man Who Lost His Head isn’t about to grin (that is, if he could grin) and bear it. No, he’ll make himself a new one, and starting with a pumpkin and moving on to a parsnip and finally picking up a block of wood, he sets about getting it just right. Still, for all his efforts, it somehow isn’t right. It isn’t the head he had before. It turns out that only a brash bold boy can save the man who lost his head from losing it altogether.Claire Huchet Bishop’s charming parable is illustrated by the great Robert McCloskey, whose books for children include One Morning in Maine, Blueberries for Sal, and the Caldecott Medal–winning Make Way for Ducklings.