The second installment of Frank Beddor’s Wonderland trilogy finds Queen Alyss learning that defeating her Aunt Redd for the role of Queen didn’t mean everything afterward would be easy in comparison. Her Aunt Redd may be gone, having leapt into the Heart Crystal with The Cat and disappearing, but no one knows if it’s for good or if she’ll find a way back to Wonderland to challenge Alyss for the queendom again.

It certainly seems like Redd may be on the verge of returning. Her army of Glass Eyes have continued attacking Alyss’s soldiers, and Glass Eyes are programmed to follow only their leader’s orders… and their leader has always been Redd. What Alyss doesn’t realize is that King Arch of Boarderland, Wonderland’s neighbor, has decided now is the time to rise up against Alyss and claim Wonderland for his own. He’s devised a plan to wipe out all of Alyss’s armies and to eradicate Imagination altogether so that everyone will be equal under his rule. His plan is WILMA, his Weapon of Inconceivable Loss and Massive Annihilation. Comprised of strands of silk from each of Wonderland’s caterpillar oracles, WILMA will destroy the Heart Crystal and the power of Imagination in Wonderland. But in order for it to work, Arch needs Hatter Maddigan, the top member of the Millinery squad of soldiers to set it in motion. To force his cooperation, he kidnaps Hatter’s daughter, Homburg Molly, and holds her hostage.

Arch doesn’t believe Redd will return, but Redd’s a determined villainess. She understands the Heart Crystal, and the fact that ideas that are passed into the Heart Crystal often find their way out to other worlds, such as Earth. And it is on Earth one day that a painter discovers he has lost his ability to paint the landscapes he so loves. Instead, every time he sets brush to canvas, he finds himself painting the image of a woman and a large feline. The harder he tries to stop, the more the images come to him, until one day he has painted a life-size portrait of Redd and The Cat, and they break through and find themselves free of the Heart Crystal and existing in France. Redd sets to work amassing an army of followers on Earth and finding the portals back to Wonderland — the puddles that exist where no puddles should exist. These portals will bring her back to Wonderland through the Pool of Tears, where she will challenge her niece again for the throne.

So Alyss doesn’t have a very easy start to her Queenship. Even though she has managed to rebuild Wonderland to be almost as glorious as it once was under her mother’s reign, she still has the threat of her Aunt Redd returning, and to top that, King Arch is plotting his coup, and her personal bodyguard, Homburg Molly, has been kidnapped. At least she has the love of her life, Dodge the palace guardsmen, to brighten her days, but even he is still focused on getting revenge at all costs against The Cat for the murder of his father, and it is obvious that he is willing to put his life in danger at every moment to get it. All of these problems are coming at her at once, and Alyss isn’t sure her Imagination will be strong enough to defeat them all. (more…)

Wow, I’ve been reading a lot of children’s books with my 17 month old, and I’m behind on posting reviews for them. So, in time for Christmas, I thought I’d post reviews of some of my favorite books to read with my son at the moment, including some of the books I’ve bought him for Christmas.

I think my favorite book to read with him right now is Bear’s New Friend, by Karma Wilson. I love it so much, I bought him all of the Bear books for Christmas this year: Bear Snores On, Bear Feels Scared, Bear Feels Sick, Bear Stays Up For Christmas, and Bear Wants More. What I love about these books, apart from their excellent illustrations by Jane Chapman, is that the stories rhyme and I can read (or sing) the stories to my son over and over again and I don’t get tired of them. The stories are fun, with recurring characters so it feels like they’re little literary friends that your little one will enjoy spending time with. I love Bear’s New Friend so much, that I’m considering having a Bear themed party for my son’s second birthday, and turning the story into a puppet show to perform for the kids. You really can’t go wrong picking up these books for your children. They come in board books for the very small, and hardcover with big pages for the older kids.

Not that I need to tout illustrator and author Eric Carle’s books, but I do love them. Our collection includes Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What do you See? and From Head to Toe. These are regular reads around here that promote learning of colors, sounds, various animals, body parts and movements. The repetition makes singing the words easy and these books, especially From Head to Toe, are interactive — my son loves to thump his chest like a gorilla and clap his hands like a seal. In fact, I can start singing the first words of any of these books, and my son will go hunting for it among the stacks of them on the ground and hand me the correct one for us to sit and read together. We also have Eric Carle’s The Mixed Up Chameleon, which we got in a set, but I have to say that I don’t actually care for it very much. Ordinarily, you just can’t go wrong with an Eric Carle book, but I’d give that one a pass for young kids. Too many words that don’t rhyme equals a short attention span for my son. Perhaps he’ll enjoy it more when he’s older.

Sterling Publishing has sets of “Look & See” books that are (or were) available at my Costco, with titles including: The Curious Cat, Amazing Animals!, The Green Caterpillar, What Do I Eat?, Wheels on the Go, and A Circus of Colors, by La Coccinella. The books came in pairs for reasonable prices, so I bought them up. My son likes these books because they have holes in each page that overlap each other and get bigger with each turn. He loves to put his fingers into the holes and turn the pages to get to the next one. The stories themselves vary in quality, and  if you want to buy some for the storylines, I’d recommend The Curious Cat and Amazing Animals! the most, as they’re a lot of fun and will give you plenty of chances to use different voices for characters. I also like The Green Caterpillar which is similar to Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I like that it helps children learn colors and to recognize basic fruits and vegetables, but my husband refuses to read it to our son because the insect characters in it are mean and bully the Green Caterpillar. So, a little warning to those of you who might be sensitive to that.

Another of my very favorite books to read with my son is Bernadette Rossetti-Shustak’s I Love You Through and Through, illustrated by Caroline Jane Church. I adore this book so much, and I think part of the reason for that is because the main character resembles my son a little bit with his ginger-colored hair and his huge, toothy grins and little belly hanging over his pants. Visually, this book is adorable, and the story is fantastic as well. It shows the child that you love him no matter what mood he’s in, what he looks like, or what he does. There’s another book with a little blond girl as the main character called, How Do I Love You? which I don’t have, but have seen and think is also very cute.

For Easter, a friend of our family gave my son Watch Me Hop! by Rebecca Young, and illustrated by Von Glitschka, with design by Pamela Notarantonio, which is available through Scholastic. The photos in this book are printed with lenticular technology on a special type of paper which causes the animals to look like they’re actually moving when you move the picture around a bit. The story rhymes nicely and it teaches children to recognize animals.

For my son’s birthday, his grandparents gave him Ten Barnyard Babies, available through Priddy Books. It’s a sound book that teaches numbers and animals. Each page has a button to push that makes the sound of the animal on it. My son loves to hear the animals and he loves to put his fingers through the holes on the page. The only way this book would be more suitable for young children is if it were a board book. The pages bend easily, and my son has creased and bent quite a few of the pages when he gets his hands on them and I’m not fast enough to notice. Priddy Books also makes lots of little chunky board books and touch and feel books for babies about colors and animals and shapes and letters (oh my!).

Top That! Publishing has sets of books with magnets in them (First Words, Colors, Shapes) that would be suitable for older children or young ones with supervision. My little guy enjoys playing with the magnets on our fridge and dishwasher, and my husband and I really love the First Words book for its magnets, because we use the letters to play an ongoing game of Scrabble on our fridge.

These are just a few of the books in the ever-growing collection of fun reads for my son.