Grade: 1

At the playground, at the pet store, on a car trip, or at home: Dick, Jane, and Sally alwayshave fun. Will Dick get another dog? Will Sally finally win a game of hide-and-go-seek? And who are Dick and Jane’s favorite friends? With short stories and text from the original Dick and Jane basic readers, this is a perfect chapter book for eager new readers!

Parents will love revisiting a fond part of their childhoods when they share these classicDick and Jane readers with their children. With charmingly innocent exploits and simple, repetitive declarations, these beloved characters helped entire generations work, play, look, see—and learn! And now they’re available for a whole new generation to enjoy. “Look, Jane,” said Dick. “Here is something funny. Can you guess what it is?”

Dick, Jane, Sally, Mother, and Father are not the only family having fun. This time, meetMike, twin sisters Pam and Penny, and their parents. Two families mean twice the laughs and twice the fun. Beginning readers will love the way each chapter is an individual story, and parents and educators will appreciate the way this format encourages young readers’ progression.

There’s never before been a book like Gallop! Employing a patented new technology called Scanimation, each page is a marvel that brings animals, along with one shining star, to life with art that literally moves. It’s impossible not to flip the page, and flip it again, and again, and again. A first book of motion for kids, it shows a horse in full gallop and a turtle swimming up the page. A dog runs, a cat springs, an eagle soars, and a butterfly flutters. Created by Rufus Butler Seder, an inventor, artist, and filmmaker fascinated by antique optical toys, Scanimation is a state-of-the-art six-phase animation process that combines the “persistence of vision” principle with a striped acetate overlay to give the illusion of movement. It harkens back to the old magical days of the kinetoscope, and the effect is astonishing, like a Muybridge photo series springing into action—or, in terms kids can relate to, like a video without a screen. Complementing the art is a delightful rhyming text full of simple questions and fun, nonsense replies: Can you gallop like a horse? giddyup-a-loo! Can you strut like a rooster? cock-a-doodle-doo! Every child who opens the book will be amazed—and so will every parent.

Using the letters of the Spanish alphabet, Ada has written 27 poems that appear in both Spanish and English. These poems honor the lives, experiences, and culture of the Spanish-speaking people who work the farmland of the American West. Silva’s vivid paintings reflect his Mexican heritage and his life as a child working on farms.

Cows wear dresses, pigs wear wigs, and sheep are scholars on George Washington’s farm. Humorous rhymes, with pictures to match, explain why Washington left his farm to go into politics.

Set in Mexico during the monarch butterflies’ annual migration and during the Days of the Dead, this is a heartwarming tale of a young girl and her close, loving relationship with her grandmother. Read this aloud in celebration of grandparents or during the Days of the Dead. A study guide is included in the back of the book along with descriptions of the celebration and the migration of the monarch butterflies.

Gerald the giraffe longs to dance, but his legs are too skinny and his neck is too long. His knees buckle whenever he tries to twirl. At the Jungle Dance, the warthogs waltz, the chimps cha-cha, and the lions tango. “Giraffes can’t dance,” they all jeer when it’s Gerald’s turn to prance. But there is one little creature who believes in Gerald. “Everything makes music,” the cricket explains, “if you really want it to.” So Gerald starts swaying to his own sweet tune. With light-footed rhymes and high-stepping illustrations, this tale is gentle inspiration for every child with dreams of greatness.