Honors/Reviews for books:

Book Links: Holiday Stew selected as a favorite book of 2007 in their
‘Lasting Connections’ of 2007

2008—state exams: Four poems from Lunch Box Mail were selected to be used in state exams: the Tennessee Comprehension Assessment Program Achievement test and by the Educational Testing Service of San Antonio, TX.

Bank Street College of Education awarded Lunch Box Mail one of their
best books in 2001 and Holiday Stew in 2007.

Children’s Book Council selected Lunch Box Mail as part of the
CBC Showcase in 2002

Nick Jr. Magazine 2003 Lunch Box Mail’ poems/art from the book
Lunch Box Mail in the September issue.

Reviews for Lunch Box Mail:

From Publishers Weekly
Not only does Lunch Box Mail: And Other Poems by Jenny Whitehead compare "The 1st Day of School" with "The 179th Day of School," but it offers many other poems that capture the joys and woes of childhood...

From School Library Journal
Whitehead's strong points are her gift for point of view and a facility for the rhythms and sounds of words. "The Bug Hotel," written in the voice of an insect talking to a desk clerk at a hotel, is fun and original. The author's child's-eye view is often right on target ("What could be slower/than turtles and snails?/Waiting for birthdays,/and popcorn to pop")...

From Booklist
...The pictures, bursting with tiny details, are absolutely right for this collection of rhymes that catches the rhythm, variety, and humor in kids' daily lives. Silliness abounds, no matter whether the subject is a scraped elbow ("Boo hoo / boo hoo / kiss you / like new."); a trip to the zoo ("I stand on / my tiptoes, / stretched tall / as can be, / but the view / at the zoo / never changes / for me"); or lunch box mail ("Did you find your hug and kiss? / I hid it in your ham and swiss"). There's always something comical going on in the busy pictures--quizzes, asides, and silly stories. A fresh collection children will enjoy reading to themselves and out loud to groans and giggles from their friends.

Reviews for Holiday Stew

From School Library Journal
Grade 2-4–The author and illustrator of Lunch Box Mail and Other Poems (Holt, 2001) turns her artistic and wordplay talents to a celebration of a year's worth of holidays–from the familiar, like Easter, Passover, and April Fool's Day, to those less well-known to some children, such as Ramadan... Move over Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky–there's a new comic poetry writer on the block.

From Booklist
Divided into seasons, the poems cover traditional holidays and lesser-celebrated ones, like Flag Day, Friendship Day, Daylight Savings Time, Teacher Appreciation Day, plus cultural and religious holidays, such as Ramadan, Rosh Hashanah, Chinese New Year, and Kwanzaa...The poems vary in length from two lines to six stanzas, will be a boon to teachers and librarians.

(Punctuation Celebration not reviewed yet.)