Written and illustrated by Dayal Kaur Khalsa, Green Cat is a vividly colored picturebook featuring brightly colored, eye-catching artwork in a simplistic yet powerful modern style. The Story is about a brother and a sister who quarrel over having to share a room. Each thinks that the room is too crowded - until the Green Cat comes and shows them how crowded a room can really be! Enthusiastically recommended for family, school, and community library picturebook collections, Green Cat is an entertaining and memorable storybook lesson about sharing.

A lot of qualities have to come together to make a childrenÕs picture book special. "How Pizza Came To Queens" has all of them.

The story is wonderful. It takes place at some unidentified time in the past (probably late 40s or early 50s), when an elderly Italian relative, Mrs. Pellegrino, pays a visit to Queens and is disappointed to discover thereÕs no pizza there Ð but she doesnÕt speak English well enough to explain what pizza is. The children she visits want to make her happy, so they do everything they can to find out what pizza is so they can get one for Mrs. Pellegrino. They finally find the answer in the library (using a dictionary and then a cookbook), and buy all the ingredients, thinking all the while that a PIE made with TOMATOES sounds disgusting. To say the least, they get a pleasant surprise.

ItÕs a funny and charming story, but itÕs a lot more than that, too. I think itÕs very important for children to learn to appreciate other cultures, and a book showing that their favorite food has not been in this country forever, but came over with immigrants, is a great way to help them see foreign cultures and people in a positive way. The children in the story are also great role models. The find Mrs. Pellegrino odd (her difficulty with English even makes her seem a little mean at first), but they are able to put aside their feelings and try to help her feel at home. And theyÕre rewarded for their kindness with their first taste of pizza Ð now thereÕs a reward most kids can appreciate.

A charming story and humane values make this book a gem. But the pictures make it even better. TheyÕre not conventionally pretty, but Dayal Kaur Khalso has a unique style based on vivid, sometimes startling colors that are eye-catching and quite beautiful.

Everything about "How Pizza Came To Queens" is delightful. I enjoy reading it and looking at the art work as much as my daughter does.

May will do just about anything to get a dog, even practice with a roller skate. Check out her methods of persuading her parents to buy her the one thing she wants most of all, A DOG! As a teacher, I will be using this book to help my students learn the art of persuasion and turning this into a writing piece to hopefully persuade their parents for that one special thing. This is really a cute book that accurately portrays how a child will go to great lengths to get what they want.

a book about people who sleeping - if it's in the living room couch or the bench on the park - the amazing illustrating of khalsa will make you or your child fall asleep with a smile !

One illustration in this otherwise innocent tale clearly depicts Gypsies as "wood people" who, the text says, will "take" children if they wander into the forest. It is unfortunate to see such blatant stereotyping--in an age when the Romany (Gypsy) population of Eastern Europe is the target of more hate crime than at any time since the Holocaust. It's too bad that so many children's authors remain completely insensitive to the slavery and poverty suffered by the Rom. Discerning readers can help by avoiding books that include any kind of sterotyping. Alyssa A. Lappen

This is a very sweet reminiscence of the author's immigrant grandma, who embraced life fully. She played poker with Dutch Schultz's gang while her plumber husband fixed their toilets. While she cared for the author as a child she passed along the wisdom she'd accumulated. Advice like "Never, ever go into the woods alone because the gypsies will get you or, should you escape that cruel fate, you'll fall down a hole." Or, "Just in case the Cossacks come to Queens, learn to say 'Da' and always keep plenty of borscht in the refrigerator." As a senior citizen she took the train from New York to California, where she could always find a poker game. When the author was old enough, she taught her to play poker as well. The author's illustrations of the way she imagined her grandmother's stories are a delight. Loving respect informs every page. The author was lucky to have such a grandma, and we are lucky to share her story.