K-Gr 1 This concept book meets comic is an excellent addition for beginning readers. A follow-up to Silly Lilly and the Four Seasons (Toon Bks., 2008), it is arranged around the days of the week. Lilly sets the course on the first spread, announcing, "Every day is a new day to play." What follows is a series of seven-panel vignettes full of gentle humor and familiar situations, one for each day. A subtle theme of empowerment runs throughout as the girl confidently enacts a variety of roles, from the decidedly grown-up city planner and teacher to the less-serious candy taster and vampire. Almost all of the text appears in word bubbles written at a very basic vocabulary level in simple sentences. The India ink and watercolor cartoon illustrations are clear, with white backgrounds to keep the scenes uncluttered. The panel layouts are as basic as they cometwo per pageresulting in a comic-book reading experience that works for very young children. A fine example of a book that knows its audience, Silly Lilly is bound to tickle readers.— Travis Jonker, Dorr Elementary School, MI

Silly Lilly Is a Cook,

In Silly Lilly and the Four Seasons (2008), emerging readers were introduced to a young child at play in simple vignettes during each of the year's seasons. Here, Lilly is a little more industrious as she moves through the days of the week engaged in "work," dabbling in cooking (getting beet juice on her hands), city planning (finding bugs under a cinder block), and teaching (reading a book to her teddy bear). The scenes are short (each only four two-panel pages long) but deftly work on several engaging levels, from introducing days of the week and various jobs to dynamically reinforcing word meanings within the context of Lilly's actions to rendering perfect child's-eye depictions of the nondifference between work and play. Rosenstiehl's uncluttered, expansive panels are decked out in bold colors and consistent compositions and are well designed to transition eyes from the large, full-page visuals of picture books to a more sequential reading experience. Another winsome beginning comic from TOON that balances the practical with the pleasurable and is itself an object to be savored.