Their mom’s promise of a surprise at dinner has two young brothers’ imaginations working overtime. Maybe it’s a swimming pool! (Oh, wait. They live in a high-rise apartment building.) Maybe it’s an elevator! (But mom says stairs are good for them.) The possibilities grow ever-more-wonderful — and improbable — until they’ve convinced themselves it must be a two-week trip to Hawaii. They tell all their friends. They give their teachers the heads-up that they’ll be gone. And then they get home, where the waiting surprise turns out to be … pizza! It’s a huge disappointment to the narrator/older brother, until younger brother Leo gleefully points out that it’s not just any pizza, but Hawaiian pizza! “Then he calls our banana splits Hawaiian ice cream. Sometimes, Leo makes my whole family laugh. Including me. And I don’t even like pineapple.” The energy and spontaneity of David Mackintosh’s narrative and illustrations capture a sense of wild possibility. (Ages 4–8)

From the creator of Marshall Armstrong Is New to Our School comes a visually stunning, hilarious picture book that explores children’s tendency to jump to the conclusions they want.

When Leo’s mom announces that there will be a surprise at dinner, she unknowingly sets in motion a riotous chain of events. What could the surprise be?! Leo and his brother are desperate to find out. Could it be a bike? A pool? A new car? Their imaginations run wild until they latch, with utter conviction, onto what surely must be the answer: an all-expenses-paid, two-week trip to Hawaii! Perhaps not surprisingly, the brothers are soon proven wrong. But the ingenious way their family decides to cheer them up poignantly reminds us that, sometimes, embracing what you already have is enough to make you feel “lucky.”