Kristyn Crow.  Bedtime at the Swamp.  Illustrated by Macky Pamintuan.  HarperCollins, 2008.  32 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

Bedtime at the Swamp is about a kid who, for whatever reason, is hanging around a swamp at dusk.  Suddenly he hears a sound pattern that repeats throughout the story—“splish splash rumba rumba bim bam boom”—and dashes up a tree to get away from what is surely a monster.  One by one, his siblings and cousins show up, and finally they meet the big green dinosaur/monster-looking thing…but the noise doesn’t stop with him, and he’s just as scared as the others!  What?  It’s Mom?!  Hm…as fun as it is to read “splish splash rumba rumba bim bam boom,” my mind cannot quite reconcile that as an onomatopoetic representation of what it sounds like to trudge through a swamp.

Alice Schertle.  Little Blue Truck.  Illustrated by Jill McElmurry.  Harcourt, 2008.  32 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

Little Blue Truck is about the world’s friendliest little eyeballs-for-headlights truck.  He always takes his time and beeps hello to all the farm animals.  Then a self-important dump truck runs him off the road…and gets stuck in the mud.  It’s up to Blue and his barnyard friends to push the colossal dump truck out, and they manage with the help of a super-strong toad.  Then the animals pile in for a celebratory ride, with toad at the wheel.

As for favorites, the girls were split over these two titles.  Geraldine prefers Bedtime at the Swamp for the silly green monster and the sound effects, and Rhys prefers Little Blue Truck because the animals look funny when they’re all piled into the truck.  If I had to break the tie, I’d tip the scales in favor of Bedtime at the Swamp, because the writing is a little stronger and the plot is not quite so predictable.  Okay, maybe not.

We’ll have some much better nominees over the next few days, really!