A modern take on “Mary Had a Little Lamb” featuring hilarious antics as Lizard sneaks into Mary’s backpack and causes nothing but mayhem in her Kindergarten class. He eats someone’s lunch, makes a mess in the painting corner, and scares the teacher silly during story time before being sent to the principal’s office to wait for Mary's mom to pick him up. It’s no fun being alone. But when Mary finally comes home from school, Lizard knows he’ll always have his very best friend. Rendered in a combination of traditional and digital color, Mary Had a Little Lizard is a silly, satisfying celebration of new experiences and friendships that can never be broken.

The attributes of 28 different lizards are revealed in this STEM nonfiction picture book, while the story provides a subtle message encouraging children to be true to their own nature. The actions of 28 lizard species--the flying dragon that swoops through the air, the shingleback that sticks out its blue tongue to scare predators, the basilisk that can race across the surface of water--invite readers to act like a lizard themselves. The text by noted author April Pulley Sayre asks: "Can you run like a lizard? Sun like a lizard? Bob your head like a lizard?" Featuring brilliantly colorful, textured artwork by illustrator Stephanie Laberis, the book also includes extensive back matter with further information about the featured lizard species--their size, geographical range, why they perform the various actions introduced in the text--as well as details about lizards in general.

A lonely boy’s new pet grows into a rather large dilemma—and a Thanksgiving parade offers an uplifting solution—in this charming tale from the author of The Boy and the Airplane and The Girl and the Bicycle. When Leonard takes a shortcut through the park, he finds an egg and takes it home, where it hatches into a lizard (or so Leonard thinks). Leonard names his new pet Buster and takes him all around the city: on the subway, to the library, to a baseball game, and more. But Buster keeps growing and growing—and Leonard gets the sense that Buster is longing for something Leonard can’t provide. Before long, Buster becomes too big to keep, and Leonard realizes he needs to set Buster free. So Leonard comes up with an inventive plan, one that involves all the balloons Leonard can find and the annual Thanksgiving parade, in an imaginative plot twist that will spark readers’ imaginations—and touch their hearts.

A boy’s school club turns into something unexpected. When Rory can’t find a school club that suits him, his parents suggest he start his own club about something he loves. Rory knows exactly what it will be: a Reptile Club! He sets up his first meeting and then he waits and waits for kids to show up. Just as he is about to give up, he hears whispering in the hallway. To his astonishment, it’s not his schoolmates who have arrived to attend the first meeting, but a crocodile, an anaconda and a gecko! A club about reptiles or for reptiles? Kids will want to sign up for this one — because it’s both!

An inquisitive lizard gets caught in a shoebox. An orange duck changes its luck. A lion agonizes over his lost teeth. A mosquito decides to spend its short life helping humans. Read about the exciting misadventures of various creatures as they wriggle and nibble their way out of tight spots in this collection of funny and sensitive short stories.

Two nonfiction topics have been selected for each month of the year; instructions are given on making mini books of this material.

An ALA Notable Book Kids ages 9-12 will “delight in [the] oddness” of this Home Alone-style tale set in the 1970s—from a prolific children’s author who captures “a magic that’s not like anyone else’s” (Neil Gaiman). With Victor’s parents out of town, he is free to investigate the mysterious lizard musicians who have recently appeared on TV . . . Things Victor loves: pizza with anchovies, grape soda, B movies aired at midnight, the evening news. And with his parents off at a resort and his older sister shirking her babysitting duties, Victor has plenty of time to indulge himself and to try a few things he’s been curious about. Exploring the nearby city of Hogboro, he runs into a curious character known as the Chicken Man (a reference to his companion, an intelligent hen named Claudia who lives under his hat). The Chicken Man speaks brilliant nonsense, but he seems to be hip to the lizard musicians (real lizards, not men in lizard suits) who’ve begun appearing on Victor’s television after the broadcast of the late-late movie. Are the lizards from outer space? From “other space”? Together Victor and the Chicken Man, guided by the able Claudia, journey to the lizards’ floating island, a strange and fantastic place that operates with an inspired logic of its own.