Holiday House Summer Titles

Ashley Waring is a Children's Librarian at the Reading Public Library (MA). She loves informational books, because learning something new is awesome!









Our band of canine friends are up to more fun adventures! If you know any kiddos who enjoyed tagging along with this crew in the previous Meisel books See Me Dig and See Me Run, you can confidently hand them this new title. See Me Play has been marked by Holiday House as a Guided Level C book. There is plenty of word and phrase repetition here, supported by humorous cartoon illustrations. Each double-page spread features one sentence; Meisel’s ability to tell such an engaging and amusing story with limited words is impressive.

Over the course of the book, we follow a fun-loving band of dogs as they chase a ball across land, air, and water. When a lion eats the ball, are our heroes defeated? Of course not! The final spread shows them looking up at a person holding a stick with the text, “I see a stick.” This open ending entices emerging readers to imagine what adventures await. I would not be surprised if the Geisel committee is taking a close look at this book. It is a very successful beginning reader, and meets many of the award’s criteria. Regardless, it is a wonderful addition to the Holiday House “I Like to Read” series and an excellent book for brand-new readers at your library.

Another summer “I Like to Read” title is Ethan Long’s Horse and Buggy Paint It Out! This new book follows the two title characters originally introduced in Horse and Buggy Dance, Dance, Dance! The illustrations feature Horse and Buggy against bright, plain backgrounds, which create half- and full-page panels. This may confuse some early readers, who will need to learn in what order to read the panels. As Anna Taylor noted in her review of Dance, Dance, Dance!, this book could serve as an introduction to the graphic novel format.

The story follows creative and free-spirited Horse as they attempt to paint a mural. We see them with buckets of paint and a brush. Their more organized friend Buggy offers to help Horse make a plan in order to better accomplish the goal of painting a mural. Horse initially refuses, but after some mishaps, they finally ask Buggy for help.

This title has been marked by Holiday House as Guided Level G; it features less phrase repetition, as well as more complicated words like “neither” and “finally.” The word “mural” is repeated throughout the book, but the reader does not see a mural until the final spread. I think it’s unfortunate that the reader does not get any clues from the pictures to help decipher this potentially new vocabulary word. Another concern is the use of the onomatopoeic word “HMPH.” It may be challenging for an early reader to decipher this bunch of consonants, although Horse’s disdainful expression and the plot do give clues to what the word may be.

If you have a reader who enjoyed Horse and Buggy’s first book, they may like this one as well. It could also be a good fit for fans of Mo Willems’s "Elephant and Piggie" books who are looking for an early introduction to the graphic novel format.