The crayoned illustrations of debuting talent Lord are a terrific match for Waddell's (Bee Frog) effortless channeling of a very young storyteller. A boy named Hal and his dog, Billy, are playing in the backyard when a huge T-Rex crashes through the fence (“ 'I'm hungry and I've come to eat you!' roared the Super Hungry Dinosaur”).

How Hal brings the Super Hungry Dinosaur to heel—and teaches him that Mom's spaghetti and meatballs are far more satisfying than eating humans or pets—is told, as a child would, through the simple accumulation of over-the-top events, brisk dialogue and lots of evocative sound effects (“Grrrrrrr!” “Slurp!” “Burp!”).

Taking her cue from children's drawings, Lord maintains a single, stage-like perspective, frequently breaking up the action into sequential strips (a chase scene involving a clothesline, trampoline and garden hose takes up several pages). She also pares down details, giving the pictures a distilled comic urgency. Her obvious glee at drawing the green, ravenous dinosaur is infectious and should inspire readers to grab their own box of crayons. Ages 3–5. (Sept.)

This genial if cutesy adaptation of the authors' bestselling Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World gets an energetic boost from James's digitally rendered art. Animal-loving readers will be charmed by the realistic, closeup depictions of young library patrons and their tender (and sometimes not-so-tender) interactions with Dewey, who is based on a real-life feline adopted by Myron after it was abandoned in the book drop of her Iowa library. The narrative becomes overly precious, though, when it ventures inside Dewey's head: “

'Babies are wonderful,' Dewey thought. “Cute and SMELL-icious, too.” And as he joins story hour he thinks, “Wowzy whiskers, this looks fun.” Despite being manhandled by some young patrons, the cat confides to his toy mouse that he is determined to help people (“I'm ninety-two percent convinced that that's the reason I'm around”) and makes good on his promise by cheering up a sad girl who's reading alone. He then proclaims himself a “REAL library cat,” which (the story concludes, on a well-worn note) “felt... purr-fect!” Ages 3–6. (Sept.)

Fu, a rebellious Chinese farm boy, accidentally provokes the warrior Chang, who challenges him to a duel. With one night to prepare, Fu seeks tutelage from a silver-bearded Master, but the training takes a surreal turn when the Master instructs Fu not in swordplay but in how to pour tea. The Master's neck stretches toward Fu like the body of a serpent as he says, “Just as bamboo grows upward to meet the sun's rays, you too must have purpose when pouring tea.” Fu finds himself rowing downstream on a tea leaf; later he appears inside a teapot, looking up at a gigantic Master. “This is crazy,” thinks Fu, but his magical lessons, which teach him the virtue of mental focus, enable him to face Chang armed only with a tea set. Rocco (Wolf! Wolf!) paints rice paddies and jagged mountains with a palette of hazy yellow-greens and browns, using panels and dramatic perspectives to cinematic effect. While the intricacies of the tea ceremony may be unfamiliar to readers, Rocco's prose is concise and he has a wealth of ways to convey information visually in this off-beat tale. Ages 3–7. (Sept.)

Donaldson and Scheffler, the team behind Room on the Broom and The Gruffalo, find a roundabout route to Christmas in this bouncy tale. Stick Man is just that, a brown stick with twig arms and branch legs. His story is delivered in perfect meter: “Stick Man lives in the family tree/ With his Stick Lady Love and their stick children three.” One spring day, Stick Man unwillingly joins a dog's game of fetch, is sent downstream by children and woven into a swan's nest. As the seasons change, Stick Man travels farther from home, futilely protesting (in vehement Green Eggs and Ham style), “I'm not a mast for a silly old flag,/ Or a sword for a knight... or a hook for a bag.” In his darkest hour, he nearly becomes kindling, only to have Santa arrive down the chimney. Donaldson and Scheffler's poignant, suspenseful profile of an inanimate object recalls Laurie Keller or The Velveteen Rabbit. Donaldson's rhymes never skip a beat, and Scheffler personalizes the many animals, people and settings in his witty watercolors. This yarn could become a December perennial. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)

Kimmelman's (Everybody Bonjours!) picture-book biography of Teddy Roosevelt's daughter is as much about her father's accomplishments as it is about Alice's unruly behavior. The conversational narrative emphasizes that soldier, diplomat and politician Roosevelt “could handle almost anything,” be it governing the U.S. or international diplomacy. “But,” reads the book's repeated refrain, “Teddy Roosevelt didn't always know how to handle his oldest daughter, Alice,” who is shown jumping on the sofa, riding a pig and driving a speeding automobile. Speech balloons present Roosevelt's repeated admonishments of his rambunctious offspring, and the typeface is sometimes creatively arranged, as when it snakes across the page in a passage about Alice's pet snake. Gustavson (The Yankee at the Seder) adeptly captures the young woman's shenanigans—and her irrepressible spirit—in lifelike oil paintings that range from spot art to full-spread scenes and include some inventive perspectives. One scene shows her happily perched on a rooftop with a teacup and umbrella, and a view from above later spotlights the havoc the escaped snake creates in the White House. A lively, fictionalized portrait of a very independent girl. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)