Viking Kestrel Picture Books

Invites young readers to peer through die-cut pages to see preferred food items for different animals.

A Jolly Postman delivers Christmas cards to several famous fairy-tale characters. Each card may be removed from its envelope page and read separately

Introduces the serious and fun activities of students just starting school.

Follows the activities of two children spending their summer vacation on an island off the coast of Maine.

Madeline and the other girls travel to London to visit their former neighbor on his birthday.

This gorgeously illustrated, full-color classic celebrates a time before email by depicting amusing correspondence between fairy tale and Mother Goose characters. What could possibly be in a letter from Goldilocks to the Three Bears? Who would write to the Wicked Witch? Open this book, take out the letters, and discover what favorite characters would write to each other--and reimagine best-loved tales together.

As Mr. Potter discovers, operating a grocery store is no easy business, especially when the competition takes all the business.

Chrysanthemum loves her name, until she starts going to school and the other children make fun of it.

An old man bets each of his children that they cannot fill the barn for a penny.

A little steamroller at the London Airport helps foil a smuggling plan.

When the teacher tells her class that they can think of almost everything as a math problem, one student acquires a math anxiety which becomes a real curse.

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales is the ultimate in fractured fairy tales. Not only do the characters create their own stories, they also design the structure of the book itself. Classic fairy tales are deconstructed and rewritten with different but recognizable names, such as The Princess and the Bowling Ball, The Really Ugly Duckling, The Tortoise and the Hair and Chicken Licken. These stories and their characters intersect and create a mish-mash of narratives. Scieszka also mocks the conventions of books in general; the title page, dedication, and even the public information page have all been deconstructed. For example, Scieszka sneaks in the line “Anyone caught telling these fairly stupid tales will be visited, in person, by the Stinky Cheese Man” on the publication data page.

A madcap variation of the cumulative nursery rhyme, this time beginning when Jack writes a book.

Pinocchio has been turned into a boy but no one, not even he, realizes it as he walks through Collodi-town trying to get some hot chicken soup for Geppetto.

Brief rhyming clues invite the reader to look through holes in the pages for a baby's view of the world from breakfast to bedtime.

A transmission received from outer space in a combination of different Earth languages tells of an alien schoolboy's fantastic excuse for being late to school again.

First published in 1941, the book tells the story of a pair of mallard ducks who decide to raise their family on an island in the lagoon in Boston Public Garden, a park in the center of Boston, Massachusetts.

A little girl who hates to go to bed and also hates to get up is told by her parents all the good things about doing both.

An alphabet book with fantastic and detailed pictures, bearing such labels as "Lazy lions lounging in the local library."

Burt goes fishing, takes refuge from a storm in a whale's stomach, and decorates a whole school of whales' tails with striped band-aids.

Contemporary fables with tongue-in-cheek morals address such topics as homework, curfews, and television commercials.