Princess Cora and the Crocodile by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Brian Floca

From the moment she was born, Princess Cora’s parents have been training her how to be a Queen. The nanny makes sure that she takes baths so regularly that there is no dirt in sight. Cora’s mother, the Queen, makes sure that Cora studies so that she will be wise. But the books are so boring, Cora finds herself yawning. Her father, the King, makes sure that Cora grows into a strong queen, so he trains her to skip rope. Between the nanny, the Queen, and the King, Cora life is scheduled to the minute and no fun at all. So when Cora thinks that a family dog will help liven things up, she writes to her fairy godmother.

Dear Godmother,

Nobody listens to me. My mother and father won’t let me have a pet and Nanny says I don’t even want one. But I do. And I’m sick and tired of everything.

Please help me.

Love,

Princess Cora

What her Fairy Godmother sends isn't any old golden retriever...Cora gets a crocodile. And since Cora has had enough with the bathing, boring lessons, and rigorous exercise, the Crocodile so kindly offers to dress as Princess Cora for a day...so that the real Cora can have the day off from “Queen training” that she’s always wanted.

Hilarious, fun and charming, Princess Cora and the Crocodile is an early chapter book that makes a wonderful read aloud for the whole family. This is a book that might be read a chapter a night over the course of a week.

Author Laura Amy Schlitz and illustrator Brian Floca are a heavyweight team. Schlitz won a Newbery Award in 2008 for her book, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, as well as a Newbery Honor in 2013 for her book Splendors and Glooms. Brian Floca won the Caldecott Medal in 2014 for his picture book about trains entitled Locomotive. With Schlitz’s words and Floca’s illustrations, Princess Cora and the Crocodile will become a classic.

A Circuitous Route

Brian Floca

Brian Floca started his 2014 Caldecott Medal–winner Locomotive thinking that he would do a book about how the steam engine operates. He wasn't sure in the beginning where it was going or where it would be set. "In asking those questions, I got to the Transcontinental Railroad," he said. "It then totally upended the book."

As he conducted his research, Floca made discoveries that shaped the course of the story line. He had thought of the crew as the through line, but on the Transcontinental Railroad, there's a change of crews. He followed the path that the train would have taken, which also altered the story. He had been planning to show the train approaching the Rockies, winding its way toward a wall of mountain. But he found that the tracks wind their way in at the gentlest slope, near Cheyenne, WY. "Almost everything that has to do with the landscape is indebted to that trip—even the endpaper elevation map," he explained in an interview for School Library Journal's Curriculum Connections.

From Locomotive

It's a great example of how research can change the course of one's thinking. It is true of scientists; it's true for writers and artists. And it's a wonderful example to share with young people: the importance of remaining open and allowing the facts to alter one's thinking. All of these discoveries added to Floca's body of knowledge, but then he also had to decide what to leave out.

Ultimately, Floca decided to focus on one family's journey cross-country. What would they have seen and whom would they have met along the way? Maps of the Transcontinental Railroad's terrain, diagrams of the steam engines, and vignettes of the towns the locomotive passed through add dimension and detail to an unforgettable journey.

Giving the Past Immediacy

Children love to hear about historic events when they are told with lots of action, and edge-of-your-seat excitement.

Brian Floca does just that with his book Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11. He makes those eight days in July 1969 seem as if they are happening right now, as you turn the pages together. Maybe it’s because, as a boy, Floca was so amazed by that maiden voyage to the Moon. In my interview with him, Floca said that this book was 10 years in the making and that he had to set aside some of the details he found so fascinating in order to keep the text simple.

The author-artist demonstrates his artistic process with a YouTube video on his Web site and also offers downloadable coloring pages so children can make their own images of the space journey, plus he talks about previous Apollo missions—some of which have related YouTube footage available.

If ever you wanted to talk with youngsters about these extraordinary journeys through space, this book provides the perfect launchpad (pun intended) for such discussions.