Grade: 1

With this moving and suspenseful picture book, “readers” will experience the joy of a story without the struggle of deciphering words. This wordless chapter book has beautifully crafted black-and-white illustrations that tell the tale of a farm boy’s daring adventures with a powerful winged horse. Your students will also enjoy comparing their interpretations of the story.

A wolf named Tempesto huffs and puffs in this wildly comic retelling of an old favorite. (”Open up, Pork Chop, or I’ll flatten this dump!”) In this rendition, the three pigs, Percy, Pete, and Prudence, and their mama, Serafina Sow, enjoy a thriving waffle business until one morning when Tempesto shows up with a taste for more than waffles. Children will cheer the pigs’ efforts to outwit the surly creature and comb the pictures for Kellogg’s hilarious visual nuances. The story might also motivate a comparison of Kellogg’s retelling with the traditional story and other variations, such as Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith’s The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (Viking).

This is a Caldecott Medal-winning masterpiece. Readers will be amazed as characters jump out of the pages of one story into the next, changing illustration styles as they go. This Three Little Pigs story begins as expected. But when the wolf comes to the house of straw and blows it down, he blows the pig right out of the picture — and the story! Soon all three pigs are soaring from one tale to the next.

Aloo-ki’s quiet morning of fishing comes to an abrupt when she realizes that her loyal sled dogs have become stranded on an ice floe. Running for help, the young girl soon finds an igloo, but it is empty, its polar bear inhabitants off on a pre-breakfast stroll. Hungry herself, Aloo-ki decides to sample the goodies and then, sated, settles down for a comfy nap. When she awakes, she and the reader will make several happy discoveries. Perfect bedtime reading.

According to A. Wolf, this is the “real” story of “The Three Little Pigs.” From prison (where he is serving time for his alleged crimes), Wolf relates his side of this famous story. The whole hullabaloo started because he had a cold and needed a cup of sugar for his dear granny’s birthday cake. While trying to borrow some from his neighbor in the straw house, he sneezed so hard that he blew down the house and killed the First Little Pig. “It seemed like a shame to leave a perfectly good ham dinner lying there in the straw,” says A. Wolf. “So I ate it up.” History repeats itself a second time, but before it can happen a third time, the police haul him away. Wolf claims that the real story was so unexciting that the reporters jazzed it up with all that “I’ll huff and puff and blow your house down” stuff. Enjoy more of Scieszka and Smith’s revisionist storytelling with The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales! (Penguin, 1992).

Bill Martin, Jr., a master of rhyme leads children through the seasons in this picture book in verse, celebrating the wonders of each month. Greg Shed’s vibrant paintings cast a golden glow on an exuberant brother and sister as they go through the turning seasons–building a January snowman, floating paper boats in the thawing streams of March, splashing through April puddles, and delighting in the wild plums and sun-kissed fields of summer. A December snowfall completes the cycle, warning, “Get ready for a winter morning!”

Two half brothers led parallel lives in a village. The mean brother lived in a large home full of fine things. The cheerful brother — a humble farmer — was a man of meager means. When the farmer finds a giant turnip growing among his crops, he gives it to the royal family. As a reward, the king makes him a royal gardener. Upon learning this, his greedy brother brings the king an enormous ruby. Instead of earning a royal position, he earns his just reward — a giant-sized slice of the turnip! In this tale, an ordinary turnip is an extraordinary gift because it is given without expecting one in return.

This adaptation of Margery Williams’s treasured childhood classic tells how a toy rabbit learns what it means to be loved by a child–and how toys become “Real.” This book will bring kids hours of fun as they read the engaging story and color in the pictures.