I Need My Own Country!

K-Gr 2--After being sent to her room for playing ball in the house with the usual disastrous consequences, a girl decides that she needs her own private country, complete with its own name, rules, and anthem. This is one of those books in which the words tell one story while the pictures clearly tell another, similar to Mark Teague's "Larue" series (Scholastic). "You will need citizens"-kitty, doggie, goldfish, and assorted stuffed animals are pictured. "And there might be invasions"-little brother attempts to enter. While not as cerebral as Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (Harper & Row, 1963), the classic story of how a child's fantasy life transforms his time-out, or as sophisticated as Paul Fleischman's Weslandia (Candlewick, 1999), this tale has substantial wit, humor, and charm. Hargis's watercolor illustrations are sunny and cheerful, filled with homey details that will invite children to pore over them time and again. A fun read that deserves a place in most collections.--Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ