At first blush, PIG THE PUG is a cute story set to rhyme about a greedy pug dog who refuses to share with his fellow housemate, a happy little dachshund named Trevor. So he piles all his toys up and sits on them like he's king of the castle.

Shaun Tan has simultaneously mesmerized and confounded readers with his surreal fables like TALES FROM OUTER SUBURBIA and THE ARRIVAL. His use of imagery and text -- and sometimes complete absence of text -- deliver artistic works of bizarre elegance.

Sometimes, when I get up in the morning, I certainly feel as though the effort to do so is a superhuman one.

Being a comic book trivia geek, I love books featuring comic book trivia. Being blessed/cursed with a Y-chromosome and a heteronormative perspective, I also happen to love comic books that feature female artwork on the cover. Good girl, bad girl, it doesn't matter.

When a kind old sensei wants to do something special for his four students -- Ninja Bear, Ninja Snake, Ninja Mouse and Ninja Fox -- he works through the night on a special tasty recipe of ninjabread. When he opens the oven, however, he is unprepared for the surprise awaiting him.

Would you believe that bedtime could be the start of a great adventure?

That's the underlying theme of BEDTIME FOR BATMAN, the picture book from Michael Dahl and Ethen Beavers that tells two parallel stories using the same set of text and contrasted images.

Caldecott winner Mary GrandPre may be best known as the illustrator of the US prints of the HARRY POTTER series, but her work extends far beyond the boy wizard's adventures, including pieces in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and the Wall Street Journal.

Fresh from Scholastic's Graphix imprint comes this full-color graphic novel, DREAM JUMPER: NIGHTMARE ESCAPE. And what's even better, while it's a series, it's the first of the series, so you're getting in at just the right time.

When it comes to funnybook humor, Dav Pilkey has gone to the dogs. Literally.

The Critical Blast Best of Awards added some new categories this year, among them Best Novel. And the first novel to win that category beat out (albeit narrowly) such books as WRITTEN IN THE STARS (Aisha Saeed) and ZEROES (Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan, Deborah Biancotti).