Looking Forward

Thank you for joining us for the first year of Guessing Geisel! We’ve had a great time, and would especially like to thank the many contributors who brought us thoughtful insight and analysis time and again about some truly wonderful books. We will be taking a break for now but will be back again when award speculation heats up in the fall, so if you’re interested in joining the ranks of contributors please let us know.

Even though we’re taking a break for a few months, we’ve got our eyes open for upcoming titles for beginning readers.

 

There’s nothing like spending more time with favorite characters from an existing series. Here are a few friends we look forward to seeing again in 2017.

• White Duck, Yellow Duck, and Porcupine joined us again in January for three more mini-adventures in My Kite is Stuck! And Other Stories by Salina Yoon.
• Bob Shea’s Ballet Cat twirls onstage to consider, What’s Your Favorite Favorite? in February.
• March brings us Tina Kügler’s tiny duo back in Snail & Worm Again.
• Emma Virjan adds two more rhyming stories to the A Pig in a Wig series with What This Story Needs is a Bang and a Clang (January) and What This Story Needs is a Vroom and a Zoom (July).
• The Mo Willems’ Elephant & Piggie Like Reading series will continue with The Good for Nothing Button! by Charise Mericle Harper (May), as well as an as yet unnamed fall title.
• Holiday House just added two new titles to their I Like to Read series in January, Peeper and Zeep by Adam Gudeon and Pip Sits by Mary Morgan.

We also like to consider titles by previous Geisel winners and honorees.

• Just released in January, Greg Pizzoli, 2014 winner (The Watermelon Seed) and 2017 honoree (Good Night, Owl), illustrated North, South, East, West, a picture book featuring text by Margaret Wise Brown.
• Jonathan Fenske, 2016 honoree for A Pig, a Fox, and a Box, will release a follow up in February, A Pig, a Fox, and Stinky Socks.
• Mary Sullivan’s Frankie (April) is a canine adventure with cover art that recalls Treat, for which she received a Geisel honor in 2014.
• 2016 honoree Stephen Savage (Supertruck), gives us another vehicle-centric story with his picture book Little Plane Learns to Write (June).
• Creators of the Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa series (honored in 2006) bring us a new title in the Lana’s World beginning reader series. Let’s Go to the Moon is set to publish in June.
• 2007 honoree Antoinette Portis (Not a Box) brings us a picture book simply titled, Now (July).

Here are some brand new titles that inaugurate three new series.

• Chronicle Books has two new beginning reader titles. Charlie & Mouse (April) by Laurel Snyder, illustrated by Emily Hughes, follows the adventures of two biracial Hawaiian brothers, and Barkus (June) by Patricia MacLachlan, illustrated by Marc Boutavant shines a colorful spotlight on a loveable pet dog.
• It seems that Jan Thomas’ signature humor and cartoonish illustrations will take center stage in the first two titles in the Ready-to-Laugh Readers series: There’s a Pest in the Garden! and What is Chasing Duck? (June).

If you spot a title that you think has the potential for Geisel gold, let us know! We’ll keep comments on this post open while we’re on a break, or you can reach us by email. Happy reading!