Have a rainy day? Bring this one out to see if kids can figure out who's making a huge mess by the end of the book. If you walk up to each of the kids and ask them if they made the mess they get to shout "Not me!" when you go up to them.
"What's in the prehistoric forest? A lift the flap pop up book" by David Carter ISBN: 978-0859535212
Pop up book with dinosaurs, what's not to love? Disclaimer: there is one page where a fish is growing legs and walking out of the water so if you have hard-core Christian fundamentalists in your story time group that would be upset by the insinuation of evolution then you can skip that page. Or not. I'm not your mom.
"Lottie Paris Lives Here" by Angela Johnson ISBN: 9780689873775
Want a story book with a strong and interesting character who just happens to be an African American without settling for one of the standard urban stereotype child-of-color books? Then this is the one for you. Lottie is a fabulous young lady who loves simple adventures. You can follow her around the book as she covers a lot of ground just being a kid. We all know how important it is to have a well-rounded collection, where a kid can find books with people that "look like me." However, I am often disappointed on how a handful of ethnic character cutouts seem to take the place of characters with depth, or an author sacrifices a plot for the sake of trying to force complicated race issues into a children's book. Not to say you shouldn't have some of those books in your collection, but it's nice to have characters with a variety of different experiences much like how life has a variety of people in it.
You can take the enlightened approach about the book being about alternative families, or you can enjoy the book as a kid would. It having a cool growing flap physical set-up similar to the "Hungry Caterpillar" as they sit on the edge of their seats to see what kind of creature comes out of the egg.
"Ribbit!" by Rodrigo Folgueria ISBN: 9780307981462 A story about a pig that wants a friend. So he decided to pretend to be a frog, and hang out with the frogs. However, they don't take kindly to his attempts to mingle, but never fear. Insert standard message about friendship at the end.
Like many things in life, this is a product of absolute boredom. It's a fastening together of random ideas to throw at the wall and see what sticks. Help yourself to anything here especially since most of it has been taken from somewhere else in the first place. Call it Manifest Destiny if you need justification. Librarians are shameless thieves after all. From Hobbit quote tattoos they pull from Pintrest (right down to the curly cue font) to architectural designs in order to feng shui their programming room (You know what we do on our vacations? Visit other libraries. Sad but true) we take from a little bit of everywhere and add to our "collection". We try to bring the best this world has to offer, and present it with no further ado in our natural habitats. Our libraries.