April brims with holidays that beg for books, from National Poetry Month to the start of baseball season, Passover and Earth Day.

Reading poetry aloud to little ones can be important to their development of strong reading skills later. The rhymes and repetition help toddlers and preschoolers to recognize language patterns and to call out the anticipated word or phrase. Interacting with the text in this way often leads to recognition of the repeated words on the printed page and, from there, to reading. All this sounds terribly academic and doesn't account for poetry's key charm–how much fun it is to hear and say. The late Margaret Wise Brown reminds us constantly of poetry as language play in classics such as Goodnight Moon. Happily for tots everywhere, last year saw the re-release of Brown's 1952 Where Have You Been? (HarperCollins, 2004, ages 1 to 4, $15.99), now with stunning illustrations by Caldecott winners Leo and Diane Dillon. The pictures reveal a bespectacled owl in pearls as she inquires into the whereabouts of 14 animals and records their answers. (The wise, book-writing bird could well be a bow both to Brown's middle name and her profession as a children's author.) The Dillons enrich Brown's simple, repetitive text by providing additional details to the animals' one-line responses. For example, the bee takes tea with a fairy "in a pink apple tree" and a jazzy lion plays sax "where the jungle grows dim." This book begs to be heard and looked at again and again.

Youngsters can explore a vibrant urban environment through author/illustrator Sara Anderson's companion books Noisy City Day and Noisy City Night (Handprint Books, 2005, ages 2 to 5, each $7.95). The short poems in these sturdy board books capture the sights and sounds of the city: "SMASH! RATTLE! Down comes the door. BOOM! Boxes hit the floor." The arresting art conveys, through saturated primary colors and stylized forms, a crowded, energetic world of jutting skyscrapers, looming billboards, zooming trucks, cooing pigeons and racing dogs and children. An important strength of the books is their portrayal of the city as a place where people live, play, work and do more than just pass through on tours.

Jennifer Ward and Jamichael Henterly team up to provide two poetry books in one with Forest Bright, Forest Night (Dawn, 2005, ages 2 to 7, $8.95). Ward's rhyming text takes kids through a day in the woods when "deer splash" and "bear cubs tumble," while Henterly's pictures show their actions as well as the shut-eyed, curled-up stance of a snoozing owl, porcupine and other nocturnal animals. Midway, the "Forest Bright" section ends, and readers can turn the book upside down to discover what those day-dozing animals actually do at night. While the deer and bear cubs sleep, the wide-eyed owl searches for dinner and the porcupines climb moonlit logs. Budding naturalists will love returning often to this book for its intriguing design, specificity of day-and-night behavior and detailed illustrations, which convey the beauty of flora and fauna without sentimentalizing Nature. A wonderful read-aloud for Earth Day on April 22.

Witty versemaker, Douglas Florian, trots out a zoo of critter poems in Omnibeasts (Harcourt, 2004, ages 3 and up, $18). Florian's talent for word play and metaphor never ceases to amaze. Flat flounders are "living dishes," a kangaroo's pouch is a "kangaroom" and a bullfrog is a "bobby-bogger, billy-bellow, mellow-fellow." Kids will get a kick out of the forms of "The Porcupine" and "The Python." In the first, each line juts out like a prickly quill, the second curls on the page like a snake squeezing its prey. Florian's watercolors, with their loose lines and expressive quality, provide humorous visuals for these playful poems. Even youngsters wary of poetry will fall prey to this charming book–and perhaps wish to pen their own paeans to mule, newt and nightjar.

In a series of free-verse poems, Newbery Medalist Sharon Creech chronicles the coming of age of 12-year-old Annie in Heartbeat (Joanna Cotler Books/HarperCollins, 2004, ages 8 to 12, $15.99). This middle-grade novel's unusual format works well, providing the essence of Annie's experiences as she struggles to understand a moody friend and her grandfather's age-related forgetfulness, awaits the birth of a baby brother and confronts criticism of her refusal to compete on the track team. As she deals with life-altering events, Annie also seeks to complete her art teacher's homework: drawing an apple a day for one hundred days. The poems explore big changes and small for this girl who "love[s] to run but ... [doesn't] want to run in a herd." A nuanced look at letting go and moving on.

Author/illustrator Wallace Edwards breathes new life into old idioms with Monkey Business (Kids Can Press, 2004, ages 6 and up, $16.95). His pairing of stock phrases with realistically rendered images in surreal scenes is a comic tour de force. For example, the page devoted to accidentally opening a can of worms shows Eloise, a fish in a red-striped bathrobe, staring aghast as earthworms slither over her kitchen counter and cupboards. And then there are the MacRhino brothers, in kilts, literally locking horns over who gets to play the bagpipes, and an elderly rooster who is no longer a spring chicken. Who knew cliches could be so much fun? Sure to delight word lovers of all ages.

In graceful prose, Jonah Winter pays tribute to a great athlete in Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates (Atheneum/Simon and Schuster, 2005, ages 4 to 8, $16.95). Clemente is remembered today for being the force behind his last-place team's drive to two World Series victories and the first Latino inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. But as this picture book biography makes clear, the native Puerto Rican had to overcome extreme poverty and prejudice to make it big. Winter quotes the ball player's maxim: "If you don't try as hard as you can, you are wasting your life," which he applied to much more than sports. Clemente died in a plane crash while bringing food and supplies, paid for himself, to earthquake victims in Central America. Raul Colon's watercolor-and-colored-pencil illustrations capture the athletic prowess and humanitarian ethos of a man whose "spirit lives on ... in Latino ball players ... [and] in the charities he started ... in Puerto Rico." The Winter/Colon team hit a home run with this inspiring sports biography.

A miracle at Camden Yards? It happens to young Aaron in Matzah Ball (Kar-ben/Lerner, 1994, ages 5 to 10, $6.95) when he goes with friends to root for the Baltimore Orioles. Since it is Passover, his mother packs him a lunch of macaroons, sugary fruit slices, tuna fish and matzah, even though the Jewish boy yearns for ballpark pretzels and hot dogs. Aaron's buddies love his Passover lunch, though. Soon Aaron's bag is empty, and he's left feeling sorry for himself as he watches the game. Then an old guy in the stands offers him a piece of matzah. There's a crack of the bat, and the ball zooms straight at Aaron, who raises the matzah like a baseball glove and manages to snag the white sphere. Mindy Portnoy has created a humorous and wholly original story about melding religious culture with modern sports. Katherine Janus Kahn adds to the fun with lively watercolors.

Mary Quattlebaum is a mother and author most recently of Grover G. Graham and Me (middle-grade novel) and Family Reunion (book of poems). You can contact her at her website, www.maryquattlebaum.com, which has information on her 12 award-winning children's books and school presentations.