The Book Hog by Greg Pizzoli

The Book Hog loves books, but he can't actually read them. He just likes collecting them. One day, he wanders into a library and is invited to join a storytime program. With time and some help from the librarian, he eventually learns to read, so he can appreciate his books for the stories they contain.

This picture books has several elements that will be useful to the beginning reader, but also some challenging areas. It has a nice, large font, which always appears on a solid background. There are some instances of hand-lettered text appearing in the illustrations, but it's never integral to the story. Many of the sentences are only a few words long (though some, particularly in the middle of the book, are more complex, with one reaching 22 words in length), and sentence breaks are never carried over a page turn (though a couple of new sentences do begin with "and" or "but"). Some of the vocabulary in the book may be challenging for new readers, particularly words like "especially," "surrounded," "several," and "swallowed."

As I librarian, I found myself saying, "That's not actually how storytime works," when the librarian offers to read the Book Hog as many books as he would like, of his own choosing. It's a lovely thought, to be sure. However, that opinion doesn't necessarily bear on the Geisel criteria. The points I've raised about vocabulary and sentence length are more likely to be of concern to the committee. I wouldn't necessarily count this book out in terms of Geisel recognition, but it will need to be examined in light of other books in the field this year to determine whether it rises to the top.