New Releases by Lane Smith

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.

Lulu's parents refuse to give in when she demands a brontosaurus for her birthday and so she sets out to find her own, but while the brontosaurus she finally meets approves of pets, he does not intend to be Lulu's.

Have you ever thought: I have so many problems and nobody even cares? Well, penguins have problems too! Discover them in this hilarious collaboration from Jory John (All my friends are dead. and Quit Calling Me a Monster!) and Lane Smith (The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales)! This penguin has come to tell you that life in Antarctica is no paradise. For starters, it is FREEZING. Also, penguins have a ton of natural predators. Plus, can you imagine trying to find your mom in a big ol’ crowd of identical penguins? No, thank you. Yes, it seems there is no escaping the drudgery of your daily grind, whatever it might be. Or perhaps we’ve just learned that grumps are everywhere. . . . This book is sure to tickle kids’ funny bones and will elicit appreciative sighs from the adults reading it aloud. "We are all Mortimer [the main character in Penguin Problems]." —The New York Times “Bursting with humor.” —Kirkus Reviews “The snark level is cranked up high.” —The Horn Book, Starred “Will be right at home with fans of Jon Klassen’s This Is Not My Hat.” —Booklist “Classic comedy.” —Publishers Weekly “Rib-tickling.” —School Library Journal

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.

When the teacher tells his class that they can hear the poetry of science in everything, a student is struck with a curse and begins hearing nothing but science verses that sound very much like some well-known poems.

Once there were four lads . . . John (Hancock), Paul (Revere), George (Washington), and Ben (Franklin). Oh yes, there was also Tom (Jefferson), but he was always off doing his own thing, so people usually forgot about him.The lads were always getting into trouble for one reason or another. Johns handwriting was bigger than all the other kids.Pauls ear-splitting job as a bell-ringer made him speak a LITTLE TOO LOUDLY all the time. George was too honest for his own good.Ben was always talking in proverbs. . . . And Tom, well, he was just plain independent.But somehow, these five lads grew up to start a revolutionone that would change this country forever.Legendary artist Lane Smith has created a totally fresh and funny way to learn about the Founding Fathers of our countrywith just a few liberties mixed in.

Goodreads Review: **You thought you knew the story of the “The Three Little Pigs”… You thought wrong.** In this **hysterical and clever fracture fairy tale picture book that twists point** of view and perspective, young readers will finally hear the other side of the story of “The Three Little Pigs.” “**In this humorous story, Alexander T. Wolf tells his own outlandish version** of what really happens during his encounter with the three pigs…. Smith's simplistic and wacky illustrations add to the effectiveness of this fractured fairy tale.” —Children’s Literature **“Older kids (and adults) will find very funny.”** —School Library Journal

Goodreads Review: **You thought you knew the story of the “The Three Little Pigs”… You thought wrong.** In this **hysterical and clever fracture fairy tale picture book that twists point** of view and perspective, young readers will finally hear the other side of the story of “The Three Little Pigs.” “**In this humorous story, Alexander T. Wolf tells his own outlandish version** of what really happens during his encounter with the three pigs…. Smith's simplistic and wacky illustrations add to the effectiveness of this fractured fairy tale.” —Children’s Literature **“Older kids (and adults) will find very funny.”** —School Library Journal

Gappers will get your goat. Literally. If You don't brush them off and return them to the ocean, whence they arrive every day, these bright orange, many eyead creatutes will cover your goats, and the goats will stop giving milk. In a village called Frip, goat's milk was the entire economy. Three families lived there — the Romos, the Ronsens, and a little girl named Capable and her widowed father, who wanted everything to remain the same. It didn't. One day, the gappers, despite an average IQ of 3.7 (±0.2), decided for a good reason to concentrate on Capable's goats. Oh, how the Romos and Ronsens turned their backs on the gapper ridden Capable! Oh, how they indeed lorded it over her! What kinds of creatures are we, one wonders, when such selfishness so often springs up so spontaneously among us? And, given the coldness of her neighbors' shoulders, what will Capable do about her gapper plague, as her share of the economy dries up? Literally, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, with a brilliant story by awar-ridden short-story master George Saunders and fifty-tw ohaunting and hilarious illustrations by bestseller-plagued artist author Lane Smith, answers that question, by telling a tale as ancient as the Bible and as modern, as a memo from the Federal Reserve Board. And funnier than both — which isn't saying all that much, admittedly. You don't get to laugh and gaze in visual awe and pleasure all that often when the Golden Rule comes under such sertous attack and such staunch defense as it did in Frip. An adult story for children, a children's story for adults, an earhlings' story for aliens, an oceanside fable for irremediably landlocked, a capitalist tool for anarchists, a fish story for loaves, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip represents the classic instant of two young geniuses colliding and colluding. The result is — what else? — an instant classic!

Meet the 21st century Shel Silverstein! Chris Harris's debut poetry collection molds wit and wordplay, nonsense and oxymoron, and visual and verbal sleight-of-hand in masterful ways that make you look at the world in a whole new wonderfully upside-down way. This entirely unique collection offers a surprise around every corner, from the ongoing rivalry between the author and illustrator, to the mysteriously misnumbered pages that can only be deciphered by a certain code-cracking poem, to the rhyming fact-checker in the footnotes who points out when "poetic license" gets out of hand.