When your Dr. Seuss-obsessed child requests green eggs and ham for breakfast, what do you do? You mix their scrambled eggs with green food coloring, right? Ha! The Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook scoffs at your simplistic notion of fun. The proper way to make green eggs and ham is to spoon fresh guacamole over pan-fried egg yolks while coating a jelly-glazed ham with a mixture of minced cilantro and parsley. While this does sound tasty, it's awfully labor-intensive for parents of Seuss-age kids. Still, this cookbook has much to recommend it: familiar illustrations, kid-friendly text, and photographs that make ordinary lunch items look like authentic Theodore Geisel creations. Start with meals like "Schlopp with a Cherry on Top" (granola and yogurt) and "Yot in the Pot" (jumbalya) and maybe you'll actually get your kids excited about mincing all that cilantro. — Gwynne Watkins

Most manuals for expecting parents elicit nothing but guilt and fear. At least this one elicits laughs. Written in the distant language of appliance and automotive manuals, it offers tips and diagrams on home installation, bringing your baby in for servicing, and regulating your baby's feeding and power supply. If it were just a gag, it would probably still make a good shower gift. But the book is written by a pediatrician and his son, who offer useful advice in a language that's amusing and helpful, without all the scolding and anecdotal tangents so common to the genre. It might be the first owner's manual you actually read. — Sarah Hepola

No writer captures children's magical thinking worldview better than David Wiesner, whose wordless books (Tuesday, Sector 7) depict the supernatural machinery behind our everyday lives. The gorgeously illustrated Flotsam is his most effective tale yet. It's the story of a boy who finds a mysterious camera washed up on the beach. He smartly develops the film and discovers photos of seashell cities, suburban octopi and continent-sized starfish that have never been seen by the human eye . . . or have they? Each page offers a new revelation, and each revelation contains its own set of mysteries: how did the clockwork fish come to be? Where does the mermaid street lead? Are those space aliens? Wiesner is a master at leaving the right things unsaid. Which may sound redundant in a book without words, but really, it's not. — Gwynne Watkins

If you're like me, you probably really don't want to know all the disgusting things that are in your average fast food meal, or what they do to your internal organs, or the brutal manner in which employees are treated. (Never mind the chickens that become your tasty McNuggets.) It would be easier — Lord knows — to just buy your kid the Happy Meal. It would also be a terrible mistake, as the enthralling and impassioned Chew On This makes clear.
    The authors visit the farmlands and factories where fast food is born, and provide a litany of disgusting factoids about fast food — such as the common presence of poop in the burgers and the use of dead bugs as food coloring.
    The book is intended as the young adult version of Eric Schlosser's 2001 bestseller, Fast Food Nation. The truth is, it's a far more readable version of the same book. — Steve Almond

That adorable moppet who lives under the haphazard supervision of Nanny at the Plaza with her pals Skipperdee (a turtle) and Weenie (a dog), has been Hollywood-ized, in more ways than one. Originally subtitled, A Book for Precocious Grownups, Kay Thompson's Eloise had the book's namesake terrorizing the buttoned-up Plaza staff and making up adorable verbs like skibble (to scamper) and slomp (trudge). But Eloise in Hollywood's authors, J. David Stem and David N. Weiss (the screenwriting duo behind Rugrats in Paris) turn Eloise into yet another six-year-old film brat. In their version (authorized by Thompson's estate), Eloise goes to '50s Hollywood, raises minor hell, and discovers glamour. The old Eloise was hilarious in her imperious self-possession, oblivious to her how her haughteur came off. The new Eloise knows all too well how cute she is. — JL Scott

There's a long tradition of celebrities monetarily embracing underprivileged children . . . and then actually adopting them so they can embrace them any old time they please. And then they write children's books. If you're gullible (and I hope you are, because that's a lot pleasanter than being cynical), then you actually believe that these rich people are doing this (with the exception of Joan Crawford!) because they're nice and not for a boost in their public image.
    All that has nothing to do with adoptive mother/actress Jamie Lee Curtis's latest book, Is There Really a Human Race?, because the story is SO RIGHT ON who cares even if it is a stunt? Parents, on this coast at least, are forcing competition and quantifiable achievement on our children younger and younger. Both words and illustrations in this book explore this issue in the literal way children do: "Am I racing my sister? If the race is a relay, is Dad on my team?" Eventually the mother answers reassuringly that: "Sometimes it's better not to go fast. There are beautiful sights to be seen when you're last." Instead of struggling to win, she advises, try to make the world a better place for everyone, using "big, bold choices. And for those who can't speak for themselves, use bold voices."
    I'm reminded of Dr. Seuss's Oh, The Places You'll Go!, which is always a lovely thing to be reminded of. — Lisa Carver