Picture Books delight! (quick they're overdue!)

Ollie the purple elephant by Jarrett J. Krosoczka (2011).

The McLaughlin children have always been promised that if they came across a purple elephant they could keep it and one day while strolling in the park they do!  ""Well... a promise is a promise," said Mr. McLaughlin and the children ask Ollie to come home with them.  Everyone's happy except the family cat, Ginger.  Ginger hates Ollie and plots with the downstairs neighbor Mr. Puddlebottom to get rid of Ollie.  Their plan works and Ollie is sent off to perform with Mr. Puddlebottom's cousin's circus!  Will the McLaughlin family ever see Ollie again...?  The illustrations are lively with bright vivid colors.  Watch this short video of Ollie by Random House.

Otto Carrotoo by Chiara Carrer (2000).

Otto muses about his rabbit siblings and their quirky habits.  His sister will only wear red shoes and his brother is obsessed with his blue roller skates.  Otto isn't obsessed with anything until he decides one day to eat only carrots; carrots for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, carrot soup, carrot pizza, carrot cake...he eats so many carrots he doesn't pay attention to his appearance until his brother and sister start munching on his carroty ears. He swears off carrots and switches to spinach!  What will Otto look like after too much spinach?  Great for sharing food stories with children.  Maybe if Otto loves carrots and spinach, picky eaters might give them a try-but just a little.  Too much of even a good thing can be bad.  The illustrations in this one are funky collage pages that will appeal to children.

I had a whole big beautiful bag of picture books to read and these were the top two favorites.  The entire bag was a day (or two) overdue.  Yikes.  So today took them back and paid my $10.00 fine!  How do I so easily let that library date escape my mind?  Any tricks to remembering to return books on time...?
Please share.