Daniel and Jill Pinkwater team up for BEAUTIFUL YETTA, THE YIDDISH CHICKEN (Feiwel and Friends 2010). Yetta escapes from sure death as a Sabbath dinner and into the mean streets of Brooklyn. Her adventures lead her to a group of wonderful parrots and Yetta becomes tri-lingual: English, Yiddish, and Spanish. Oy Gevalt! Children will love to learn a lovely lexicon of Yiddish words and phrases most notably, stinky cat.
Talk about a dynamic due: Mo Willems and Jon Muth join forces for CITY DOG, COUNTRY FROG (Hyperion 2010). Muth's quietly understated watercolor illustrations are a perfect match for Willems' spare text that is solemn and funny at just the perfect moments. Four seasons (well, there is a fifth actually, another spring) in the lives and friendship of a city dog and a country frog could not be more eloquent.