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Thirsty Baby by Catherine Ann Cullen, illustrated by David McPhail (Little, Brown, $14.95, 32 pp)
Sometimes it only seems like children are insatiable. Parents of new babies will appreciate the unquenchable thirst that drives this simple rhyming story. When his bottle isn't quite enough, the new baby drinks the bathwater, then a pond, then a river, then the ocean. Hopefully a board book version will be published soon to make the book more appropriate for babies. Ages 1-4.
Bad Cat by Tracy-Lee McGuinness-Kelly (Little, Brown, $15.95, 32 pp)
How can you not love a book that takes place in a city called the Big Stinky and that contains characters named Sally Hillybumps and Mr. Pooslop? Debut children's author McGuinness-Kelly creates a delectably garish cityscape for Bad Cat to wander through, pulling his innocent pranks. The twist is that all of Bad Cat's victims wind up happy to have been victimized. A store owner splashed by an overturned can of paint concludes that the paint job is an improvement. A couple who slips into each other when Bad Cat throws a banana peel wind up falling in love. Ages 4-8.
A Winkle In Time: Mr. Winkle Celebrates The Underdogs of History by Lara Jo Regan and Mike Regan (Random House, $14.95, 48 pp)
I carelessly ordered this book thinking I was getting a reissue of Madeleine L'Engle's classic fantasy, but I wound up with something indescribably different. Somehow I've missed the hoopla surrounding Mr. Winkle, a real mutt who only looks stuffed. Mr. Winkle even has his own Web site (mrwinkle.com), where he plays a lot of dress-up courtesy of his "guardian," award-winning photographer Lara Jo Regan (Time, Newsweek, Life, etc.). In his third book, Mr. Winkle dons the garb of some of the lesser-known figures of history (the African Queen Amanirenas, German flight pioneer Otto Lilienthal, and Laika, the first dog in outer space, to name a few) to stage some forgotten moments in time. Mike Regan keeps each short bio brief, witty and conversational, so there's no pain involved in the history lesson received. Okay, so dress-up dogs are smarmy and sentimental - but you really gotta see this one to believe it. Ages 6-10.
Ruby Electric by Theresa Nelson (Simon & Schuster, $16.95, 272 pp)
Fade in on a plucky, 12-year-old screenwriter, busily tapping out the script for the next Spielberg spectacular. Sure, what Ruby Miller writes is drivel, but we've all seen worse on the big screen. It's hilarious - and heartbreaking - to imagine the potential this young girl has, if only she can navigate the twisted plot of her own puberty. In Ruby's own personal screenplay, she gets sentenced to community service for a crime she didn't commit. Somehow, we get the feeling her story will have a more-or-less happy ending, like the endings she never quite gets around to finishing. Thanks to Nelson's spot-on reproduction of a precocious mind at work, here's a character we can't help but root for. Ages 9-12.