By Harriet Ziefert

ssie is trying to get ready for school, but her room is so messy she can't find anything! Will she locate her keys, her books, and her permission slip, and still get to school on time? Finding the missing objects amidst all the clutter of Bessie's messy room is a game that school-age children will relish. Searching will improve new readers' visual discrimination skills, and die cuts enhance the fun.

By Mercer Mayer

Feeding a hamster, reading comic books, watching TV . . . Little Critter finds all sorts of ways to avoid doing his homework. But with Mom’s gentle prodding, he soon learns that just a little homework isn’t so bad after all.

By Abby Klein

Freddy Thresher has a problem: a really, really, big problem. His teacher wants the class to do reports on nocturnal animals, and everybody but Freddy has a really cool animal to study. How will Freddy find one? When his best friend, Robbie, says the two boys should have a sleepover and sneak outside at night, Freddy makes a huge mistake and ends up getting his late-night wish in a very unexpected way!

By Cathryn Falwell

In this original picture book, Anna's eating a bowl of alphabet cereal when she discovers that the letters in her spoon can rearrange themselves to spell two different words. Anna becomes a "word wizard," making the changes happen at will. When she finds a little lost boy, she adds an m and turns his tears into a stream. When the stream flows into the ocean, she rearranges the letters to make a canoe. After a series of adventures, she takes the boy home, where she arms him against further catastrophes by turning the toy sword he carries into words. In an afterword, Falwell explains that Anna is making anagrams, and she encourages readers to play around with the idea by using magnetic letters, alphabet blocks, or pasta, or homemade letters from a variety of suggested materials. Brightly colored and full of action, the cut-paper collage illustrations make this an eye-catching introduction to anagrams.

By Marc Brown

After helping his friends all week with their homework assignments, Arthur worries that his own homework will be late. Little does he know that his loyalty to his friends has its rewards in the most unexpected ways.

By Sharon Creech

Newbery Medal winner Sharon Creech's Love That Dog, a funny, sweet, original short novel written in free verse, introduces us to an endearingly unassuming, straight-talking boy who discovers the powers and pleasures of poetry. Against his will. After all, "boys don't write poetry. Girls do." What does he say of the famous poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"? "I think Mr. Robert Frost / has a little / too / much / time / on his / hands." As his teacher, Ms. Stretchberry, introduces the canon to the class, however, he starts to see the light. Poetry is not so bad, it's not just for girls, and it's not even that hard to write. Take William Carlos Williams, for example: "If that is a poem / about the red wheelbarrow / and the white chickens / then any words / can be a poem. / You've just got to / make / short / lines." He becomes more and more discerning as the days go by, and readers' spirits will rise with Jack's as he begins to find his own voice through his own poetry and through that of others.

By Debra Frasier

This inventive picture book is a spelling book, a vocabulary book, a game book, and a costume book all rolled into one. Sage, a fifth grader who is home sick, phones a classmate to get her homework assignment. In a big hurry, Starr spells each word out except for the last one. Mistakenly, Sage writes what she hears, Miss Alaineus. When she returns to school, Mrs. Page holds a Vocabulary Bee and gives her the word miscellaneous. Her creative spelling and definition sends the class into gales of laughter, much to Sage's dismay. Resolution occurs 10 days later when she arrives at the Annual Vocabulary Parade dressed as "Miss Alaineus, Queen of all Miscellaneous Things." The student's ability to take her mistake and remake it into a positive experience is a valuable lesson. The text and marker illustrations are detailed and appealing, crammed full of fun ways to promote the study of the English language. There is a hidden-word game on the endpapers, an extra credit assignment using alphabetical sentences on every page, and pictures of Sage's Vocabulary Parade Scrapbook on the last three pages.

By Monalisa Degross

A gentle, thoughtful story of a young African-American boy's discovery of the power of words. Each time a word strikes Donavan as special (e.g., extraterrestrial, orchestral, perseverance, boisterous), he writes it down on a slip of paper and puts it in a jar. When his collection no longer fits in its container, he asks several people what to do, but in a serendipitous way comes upon the solution himself. While visiting his Grandma, the other senior citizens in her building find that reading the words they pull from the jar is just what they need to cheer them up, and Donavan realizes the pleasure of sharing. While this book is not a fast-paced page-turner, the 10 chapters are short, and an appealing black-and-white illustration appears in each one. This title builds readers' vocabulary in a palatable way, and could be used in conjunction with a lesson on using the dictionary.

By Bernard Most

After discovering an "ant" in his own name, Anthony searches for the word "ant" in other words. Can you find an ant in the name Anthony? A black ant? A red ant? A fire ant? How about a carpenter ant? Or is the ant in Anthony not an insect at all?

By Priscilla Turner

Narrated in a pseudo-serious tone, this is the fable of vowels and consonants who do not get along. There is terrible bickering and constant rivalry between them. Finally, war is declared and a conflagration occurs complete with dive-bombing T's, marching D's, spear-tossing J's, and paratrooper U's. Amid the fighting, a scrawling, formless chaos appears. Individually, the letters cannot halt the scratching threat of disaster, but when they cooperate and form actual words, the jumbled scrawl at last rolls out of town.

By Valerie Tripp

Molly and her classmate Susan pair up to write a report about George Washington. When they disagree about how to prepare the report, Molly thinks their grade—and their friendship might be doomed. Luckily, Susan has a few surprises up her sleeve. After you read Molly’s story, make cherry cupcakes, just as Molly might have done to celebrate Washington’s Birthday.

By Dan Gutman

Brenton is a computer genius, but the other three members of his work group think he's a nerd. So, when he tells them that he has invented a machine that does homework, they taunt him until he agrees to demonstrate. The machine actually works, and Kelsey, Sam, and Judy convince him to let them use it. At first, they are delighted with their freedom, but things quickly get out of hand. Their teacher is suspicious of the suddenly errorless work, and other friends resent the time that they spend together. Eventually, their secret causes conflict with the law. The story is told entirely through short excerpts from police interviews. This device shows the developing relationships through the kids' own observations.

By Laurence Yep

Jim's Grandpop is the meanest man in Chinatown so it is a challenge to describe him for a school essay. However, that problem seems insignificant when an imp, released from an ancient jar in China, starts to harass the boy and his parents. It starts a fire at the sweatshop where Jim's mother works and a panic in the butcher shop where his father works. The boy knows that his grandfather will be the next target. Strangely, the elderly man relishes the fight, hinting that he might be the reincarnation of the Chinese hero Chung Kuei. Although he is old and without magic, Grandpop is still a fighter. Can he stop the imp? Maybe there will be hope if his "native-born, no brains" grandson can team up with this crotchety guardian of Chinese tradition. Yep has written a fast-paced, light adventure that is full of the flavor of San Francisco's Chinatown. The clash of modern and traditional cultures is common among many immigrant groups and perhaps this whimsical look at the conflict will help children value and understand their grandparents.