Jane Yolen is a children's author not to be taken lightly. She sauntered into our house with How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? when we were just getting into the manners-teaching stage, and charmed us with her tongue-in-cheek instructional style. Preschoolers are universally delighted to see dinosaurs rendered in their image, and behaving badly at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Keep this book away from infants unless you want a child to suddenly realize that food can be shoved up their nose.

The only other manners books we have found that we like are Sesyle Johnson's What Do You Say, Dear? and What Do You Do, Dear?, which take a different tack and pair absurdity with equally useful guidelines for behavior. Those books are classics, illustrated by none other than Maurice Sendak, who went through a phase of drawing little boys wearing oversized coats with brass buttons. I'd say it's an absent father complex (remember how big a deal it was when Father Bear came around in the Little Bear books?).

(Bill Clinton once met Sendak and told him he had a childhood fantasy of wearing one of those coats. "But Mr. President," Sendak responded, "you'll only be president for another year. You'll still have plenty of time to be a doorman.")

But back to Yolen. We have been much less enthusiastic about the other books in that dinosaur series, which feel more proscriptive and less fun - books on bedtime routines, going to school, room cleaning, etc.

Yet Yolen will have the last word with us yet. We were sent a series of recent Jane Yolen board books primarily on the strength of their inclusion of hippos, which, for some reason, are Z's favorite animal (she intends, she has told us, to be a pink hippo for Halloween). But hippos or no, the books are great. Illustrations by Vlasta van Campen are evocative and beautiful, and Yolen's rhythmic sequences in these books discuss colors, emotions and - in my favorite from the series - the numbers one to ten, each illustrated by a group of appropriate size in their own attire and activity (sledding, marching in a marching band, etc.). The last page shows representatives from each of the previous hippo "sets" in some state of disarray as it heads into the muddy "wallow," and Z considers it her personal mission to identify each one and match them up with the page they were first shown on.

These books are great for kids ages 1-3, and our four-year-old still enjoys them. Then again, they are hippos.

An interesting additional book comes up in the search results linked above - a book Jane produced with her son, a musician, that is a reworking of the Three Billy Goats Gruff for teenagers, complete with song lyrics. The book, Trollholm, is begging for a companion CD. The book looks fascinating, spinning its own complex drama from the foundation of that long-loved folktale, and we will be seeking it out, although apparently it is years from being appropriate grade-level reading for our daughter. If anyone has read this, we'd love to hear from you. And bands in search of inspiration, take note - the lyrics are provided, you just need to write some rock 'n roll for kids and you're off to the races. - Jeremiah