In McElligott's delightfully deadpan story, a boy sneaks out to his father's barbershop for a full-moon session of monster haircutting. Grainy washes with simple, black outlines reflect the gentle art of barbering as the boy stands on a stool (blindfolded) to braid Medusa's snakes, as other monsters patiently await their turns. "Some customers are easy," the boy says, as he cuts a single, springy hair from a one-eyed troll. "Some are more difficult," he goes on, tackling a hairy fiend with pruning shears. With the distinctive combination of the freakish and the humdrum, it's a good candidate for the stack of battered bedtime favorites. Ages 4–8. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 07/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

The familiar saga of a child who doesn't fit the norm is given a twist in this story about monster Bernadette, who looks the part and "caused mayhem of all kinds," but who also has a penchant for flowers, kittens, and group hugs. Bernadette's classmates are horrified by her cutesy tendencies—even rejecting her offering of cupcakes because they'd rather have bug parts or fried snail goo. By book's end, Bernadette conforms to expectations, while indulging her giving spirit, by making each classmate a gross card ("eeny, meeny, miney, mo. this clipping's from my pinky toe!"). Despite her ingenuity, readers may be more drawn to her outlandish classmates. Ages 4–8. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

A monster with a dragging tail and crested head takes whiners Henry and Eve home in a sack, planning to make them into whiny-child salad, but that doesn't curtail their behavior ("I don't like sitting on lettuce," whines Henry). The monster's wife is similarly afflicted: "I hate cilantro!" she screams, ordering him to remix the salad dressing. But while the monsters and neighbors debate dinner options ("Perhaps a whiny-child vindaloo"), Henry and Eve hightail it for home. New Yorker cartoonist Kaplan adds only the subtlest color washes to his blank-eyed figures, framed inside black lines, serving the snarky text with a pinch of Shel Silverstein and plenty of bourgeoisie irony. Ages 4–8. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Yearning to break free of her life underground, Lala, a young monster with scaly arms and lettuce hair, heads for a mountaintop castle, where she endures public humiliation at the hands of three princesses ("You're a monster forever," they jeer. "Now get out of here!"). The next day, using her insider's knowledge, she rescues the three from a brute with "sour beast-breath," but declines to befriend them even after gratitude makes the princesses relent. Boiger's pastel paintings play up the contrast between the princesses' charmed existence and Lala's comfy burrow, and while MacHale's (the Pendragon series) verse—like his heroine—is a little lumpy, he delivers his message about handling mean girls with sincerity. Ages 4–6. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

A monster mother and father are horrified when one of their hatchlings enters the world furry, pink, and sweet—unlike his raucous monster siblings, Horrid and Frightful, who are spiked and warty like their parents. Little Shock, something of a Pokémon and Care Bear hybrid, just gets fluffier as he gets older and is afraid of the dark. At their mother's insistence, Horrid and Frightful take Little Shock with them to the forest to scare the animals, where Little Shock's good nature ends up coming in handy. Though readers may be loath to identify with such a squeaky-clean hero, the message about celebrating differences comes through, and Edgson's artwork offers visual humor in spades. Ages 3–7. (June)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 06/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

The Big Scary Monster is a furry, blue bully with a strong resemblance to Gossamer, the orange Looney Tunes creature. He regularly scares the little animals who live on his mountaintop, but when he hatches a plan to terrorize the animals further below, he discovers that though they look small from the top, they're actually quite large: "The Big Scary Monster had never felt so small and scared in his life." Docherty's polished landscapes also recall classic animation, with solid shadows and artful play with perspective. The monster's comeuppance and Grinchlike redemption offer a satisfying if slightly treacly conclusion. Ages 3–5. (July)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 07/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

As hard-hitting as Jack Gantos's Hole in My Life, this memoir of a teenager's year in jail offers insight into a mind obsessed with violence. First-time author Henry alternates explicit memories of his troubled childhood in a house full of guns with scenes inside an Illinois county jail, where the 16-year-old has plenty of time to ponder the events leading to his act of armed robbery and subsequent arrest. The portrait of Nathan's youth is not for the fainthearted. His seeming lack of conscience as he torments animals and engages in other forms of cruelty are disturbing, yet he is shown to be as much a victim as a villain; the influence of Nathan's abusive, unpredictable father looms over the book. Moments when Nathan expresses remorse ("I would eventually, many years after all this, acquire a lot of cats... and I would lavish them with affection.... I would over identify with them, to compensate for what horrors I visited upon the animal kingdom when I was young") foreshadow his repentance. Witnessing Nathan's emotional journey is a painful but enlightening experience that won't easily be forgotten. Ages 14–up. (July)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 06/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

This gritty, well-sourced account of WWI offers a compelling and often horrific look at the conflict. Freedman (Washington at Valley Forge) hooks readers with his fluid style and a detail-rich story of Archduke Ferdinand's assassination and the political powder keg that existed at the time in Europe. The book recounts gruesome mass killings brought about by trench warfare and going "over the top" into the "no man's land" in between, combined with the debuting technologies of machine guns and tanks, chemical and air warfare. Haunting b&w photos and poignant quotations from both Central and Allied combatants do not gloss over atrocities ("dozens of men with serious wounds must have crawled for safety into new shell holes, and now the water was rising about them, and... they were slowly drowning"). This remarkable pictorial overview of WWI, its causes, major battles, and legacies (namely WWII and the repartitioning of Europe and the Middle East) concludes with chapter notes, bibliography, and index. Readers' conclusions will likely mirror that of a French soldier writing in his diary just before he was killed: "Humanity is mad!... What scenes of horror and carnage!" Ages 12–up. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

In Barnholdt's (Two-way Street) silly rom-com, set over the course of one wild night, high school junior Eliza loses her secret notebook, where for years she's collected lists of everything she's afraid of doing. A group of notorious mean boys finds it, and they send Eliza on a night out where she's forced to live out her fears—threatening to publish the journal online if she doesn't comply. While the fear journal makes an enticing (if not entirely believable) plot device, the dares themselves are generally so banal—asking a gorgeous jerk to dance at a club, singing karaoke, kissing another jerk at a party, posting a bikini picture online—that there's no real opportunity for Eliza to achieve any significant emotional growth. A lack of character development may further deflate readers' emotional investment in Eliza's drama, as well as the series of events that is supposed to shepherd her back into the arms of her ex-boyfriend, who both broke her heart and played a role in her notebook's going missing in the first place. Ages 14–up. (July)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 07/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

With a Shakespearean plot—the maid's daughter masquerades as a boy in order to attend private school—Baratz-Logsted (Crazy Beautiful) hasn't ventured into uncharted literary territory in her latest novel. What she has done, however, is write a delightfully earnest story about gutsy 16-year-old Bet, who is determined to get an education. Set in 19th-century England, the story follows Bet as she stealthily and comically pretends to be her wealthy but ne'er-do-well childhood friend, Will, at the Betterman Academy, "where parents and guardians stow their charges when no one else in the world will have them." Bet quickly learns that a boy's world is not without difficulties: bullies, compulsory sports, and dances chief among them. But her hardest challenge comes when she falls in love with her serious and slightly odd roommate, James. Baratz-Logsted amusingly describes the lengths to which Bet goes to pass as a boy (cutting off her hair) and keep her secret (insisting on changing clothes in the dark). Readers will root for Bet to the very end, as she proves that from lemons can come the sweetest lemonade. Ages 12–up. (July)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 07/01/2010 | Details & Permalink