This is a great volume! I was curious about [a:Steven Kellogg|68572|Steven Kellogg|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1200676988p2/68572.jpg], but we'd only ever read [b:The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash|781498|The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash|Trinka Hakes Noble|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348478859s/781498.jpg|767519]. The stories included in this compendium are: "Can I Keep Him?", "Won't Somebody Play With Me?", "The Island of the Skog", "Much Bigger Than Martin", "Pinkerton, Behave!", "The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash", "Ralph's Secret Weapon", "Best Friends", "The Christmas Witch", "Library Lil" and "The Mysterious Tadpole". All of the stories are amazingly illustrated, some of them more intricately than others, and for some of them the pictures are almost overloaded. I must admit that for [b:Won't Somebody Play with Me?|454475|Won't Somebody Play with Me?|Steven Kellogg|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1208650443s/454475.jpg|443061] I only skimmed the pictures without taking everything in, but I didn't find that story very endearing either. I loved [b:The Island of the Skog|454466|The Island of the Skog|Steven Kellogg|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348542713s/454466.jpg|443052] and the sort of outrageous [b:Ralph's Secret Weapon|1520515|Ralph's Secret Weapon|Steven Kellogg|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1215360265s/1520515.jpg|443010], and we'd definitely want to learn more about Jimmy's Boa. My son had a soft spot for Pinkerton and I thought [b:Much Bigger Than Martin|1104117|Much Bigger Than Martin|Steven Kellogg|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1181015418s/1104117.jpg|443105] and [b:Best Friends|384561|Best Friends|Steven Kellogg|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347456345s/384561.jpg|374292] were sweet, but I didn't care much for [b:Library Lil|644902|Library Lil|Suzanne Williams|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348831993s/644902.jpg|631065], the fault of which probably mainly lay with the unremarkable storyline rather than the illustrations. We didn't make it to [b:The Mysterious Tadpole|210465|The Mysterious Tadpole|Steven Kellogg|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1172720270s/210465.jpg|203708] before we returned the book, but we'll get to it next time. ( )