Davide Cali, illus. by Benjamin Chaud. Chronicle, $12.99 (44p) ISBN 978-1-4521-3168-9
The scruffy-suited, shaggy-haired boy from I Didn’t Do My Homework Because... is back, and he has more excuses ready for his teacher, this time regarding why he’s late for school. His circuitous, belief-defying story involves being attacked by...
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Davide Cali, illus. by Benjamin Chaud. Chronicle, $12.99 (44p) ISBN 978-1-4521-2551-0
Chaud's crabbed pen-and-ink drawings give a distinctly Gothic sensibility to Cali's (The Bear with the Sword) sly collection of homework excuses. The narrator, a boy dressed in a suit and tie, negotiates with his teacher. "An airplane full of...
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Davide Cali, illus. by Vincent Pianina. Wilkins Farago (IPG/Trafalgar Square, dist.), $19.99 (80p) ISBN 978-0-9871099-1-0
Younger readers may not be familiar with Christie’s Ten Little Indians, but they’ll be hooked by the plot gambit of trapping a group of suspects in a mansion and knocking them off one by one—if they can stand all the corpses, that is. French writer...
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Davide Cali, illus. by Raphaëlle Barbanègre. Tundra, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-77049-763-4
In Cali’s cracked version of Snow White, the heroine takes refuge with 77 dwarfs with pointy hats and pointy beards in a crayon box of colors, but life with them
is no picnic. “For starters, how was she going to learn all their names?” writes Cali (
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Davide Cali, Author, Serge Bloch, Illustrator , illus. by Serge Bloch. Random/Schwartz & Wade $15.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-375-84500-0
In identical foxholes, two identical soldiers in khaki uniforms wait to destroy each other. “Every morning, I shoot at him. Then he shoots at me,” says one. When he and his enemy both light fires or suffer in the rain, the speaker does...
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Davide Cali, Author, Eric Heliot, Author , illus. by Eric Heliot, trans. by Randi Rivers. Charlesbridge $15.95 (28p) ISBN 978-1-58089-191-2
Whenever Marcolino ditches piano practice, Mom pulls out her secret weapon: guilt. “When I was your age, I played for hours,” she says wistfully, adding that her own aspirations to be a grand pianist were never realized. “After you
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Davide Cali, illus. by Benjamin Chaud. Chronicle, $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-4521-3169-6
Hypocrisy, thy name is grown-up: that’s what a bunch of kid sleuths discover when they tail the adults in their lives in this picture book from frequent collaborators Cali and Chaud (I Didn’t Do My Homework Because...). As the text offers a litany...
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Davide Cali, trans. from the Italian by Laura Watkinson, illus. by Marco Somà. Eerdmans, $16 (26p) ISBN 978-0-8028-5486-5
In a moody exploration of belonging from the duo behind The Queen of the Frogs, a childless couple discovers an infant by the edge of a swamp. Ignoring that the baby “had gills like a fish,” they name him Boris and raise him as their own. (Readers...
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Davide Cali, illus. by Maria Dek. Princeton Architectural Press, $17.95 (40p) ISBN 978-1-61689-937-0
Zip, Flip, and Trik, anthropomorphic creatures with animalian features, lie on the ground, gazing up at the sky. “Where do the clouds go when we can’t see them anymore?” Zip asks. “Maybe they wind up where the world ends,” Flip says. They decide to...
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Davide Cali, trans. from the Italian by Debbie Bibo, illus. by Serge Bloch. Harper, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-06-256830-4
George, a bespectacled urbanite who sleeps in blue pajamas and a plaid hat, finds a black silhouette at his kitchen table one morning. “Who are you?” he asks. “I’m your shadow,” the silhouette replies. “Shouldn’t you be on the floor?” George points...
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