Ellie's Bad Hair Day (Ellie and Oscar)
Ellie may be crazy about her rabbit buddy, Oscar. But she is sure not crazy about the undulating, multicolored foliage of her hair: “It’s like a terrible something. But worse. Between seven or eight times worse.” Sick of trying to tame it (squiggly arrows indicate the flaws in each bottle of hair product, from “this shampoo only works on Tuesdays” to “smells like squirrels”), Ellie decides to take her bad hair day on the road to find someone else with a similar problem. Keane’s sense of humor is capital-Q quirky, and his story unfolds with the make-it-up-as-you-go-along feel of a daydreaming kid, especially as Ellie and Oscar leave the tree where they live (?!) and circle the world on a scooter (?!!), only to find massive hairdos in every style but Ellie’s own. De Dios is in lockstep with the weirdness, illustrating the hair—as well as the scenery—as interlocking stripes of psychedelic colors set against a white background. It’s her hair, of course, that gets Ellie rescued from being lost. Her conclusion? “This has been a good hair day.” Grades K-2. --Daniel Kraus