*COUNTRY ROAD ABC: AN ILLUSTRATED JOURNEY THROUGH AMERICA'S FARMLAND

A rainy city begins this alphabet book for older readers; roads and clearer skies lead us out of the urban landscape to the pastoral. A few of the themes represented here are the bucolic—“barn cats”, “hay”, and “pigs”—but the contemporary rural setting is this book’s force. “Inoculate” and “ammonia fertilizer” are terms a country kid would be acquainted with (and a suburban kid might want to learn about). This is a busy book as carefully etched depictions of an active farm community are accurately revealed. Along the bottom quarter of this book is a continuous pathway leading us not only through this town but through the four seasons. Nomination: Tony Carmack