Honor roll: National Book Award for Children's Picture Book

The bee and the fox, the sheep and the ox—two of each kind trudged aboard Noah’s famous vessel. Peter Spier uses his own translation of a seventeenth-century Dutch poem about this most famous menagerie.

With Papa off to sea and Mama despondent, Ida must go outside over there to rescue her baby sister from goblins who steal her to be a goblin’s bride.

“Doctor De Soto, the dentist, did very good work.” With the aid of his able assistant, Mrs. De Soto, he copes with the toothaches of animals large and small. His expertise is so great that his fortunate patients never feel any pain.

Since he’s a mouse, Doctor De Soto refuses to treat “dangerous” animals—that is, animals who have a taste for mice. But one day a fox shows up and begs for relief from the tooth that’s killing him. How can the kindhearted De Sotos turn him away? But how can they make sure that the fox doesn’t give in to his baser instincts once his tooth is fixed? Those clever De Sotos will find a way.

“A brisk, even headlong rhyme plunges us into a swirling cluster of images…an overwhelming profusion of examples of houses. It is an astonishing book, one of the best of the year”.—The New York Times.

As a child Great-aunt Alice Rumphius resolved that when she grew up she would go to faraway places, live by the sea in her old age, and do something to make the world more beautiful—and she does all those things, the last being the most difficult of all.