Katie in the Kitchen (Katie Woo)
From picture-book author Manushkin comes a lighthearted chapter-book series about a well-meaning, mischief-prone young girl. In this entry, Katie struggles with a feeling nearly every kid will recognize: “I want to help, but no one will let me.” After her parents turn down her offers to lend a hand while they bring soup to a neighbor and fix the car, Katie decides to make herself useful in the kitchen, where she tries to cook dinner and, predictably, creates a mess of epic proportions. Her parents’ good-humored reaction to Katie’s efforts ends the story on a reassuring note. The evenly paced dialogue and basic vocabulary are well tuned to the interests and abilities of new readers and are nicely extended in Lyon’s colorful, warm paint-and-pencil illustrations. The pictures create engaging characters in Katie and her Asian family, and although their specific ethnicity isn’t mentioned, they bring much-needed diversity to the early-reader shelves. A glossary, discussion questions, and a kid-friendly recipe for yogurt parfaits close this strong start to the Katie Woo series. Grades K-2. --Gillian Engberg