Happy New Year! Here are a few selections to get it started right. (Who knows? These recommendations may even spawn a few new resolutions).

Who couldn’t use a few more answers to prayer, along with a little more heavenly help every single day? A Year of Powerful Prayer: Getting Answers for Your Life Every Day offers just such help with 365 daily readings.

The brief pages include excerpts from talks by General Authorities and Church leaders past and present, as well as writings by religion professors and others. (I was especially glad to see women quoted, including some of the Young Women and Relief Society leaders.)

Thoughts and advice are categorized by headings ranging from why and how we pray and following the example of Jesus to improving the quality of our prayers and recognizing answers.

There’s ample substance here for daily devotionals, an applied study of prayer, or well-prepared talks — and it’s a handy volume to return to year after year. (Deseret Book 2013, 409 pages in hardcover, $17.99.)

Performing better in our Church callings is a resolution some are likely making. For those who work with children and music, there’s a renewed publication with a wealth of ideas to make teaching Primary songs more effective.

A Children’s Songbook Companion is a team effort by Pat Graham, Mary Gourley, Trudy Shipp, and Linda Stewart, with illustrations by Nina Grover. Independently published by Horizon Publishers (2013, 304 pages in large soft cover, $23.99), it is intended as a helpful supplement to the official LDS Children’s Songbook. And it is.

This treasure of a music resource, first printed in 1994, offers lesson plans for every song in the book, from the more easily taught songs such as “Children All Over the World” to the more challenging musical phrases of the individual Articles of Faith. The word cards, “melody pictures,” and phrase charts for the latter are a godsend.

A Children’s Songbook Companion does not rely solely on visuals — words or pictures — to teach a song and its meaning, but offers ways to help children hear the differences in melody and rhythm, potentially elevating a so-so singing time to an engaging learning experience. Almost any Primary chorister would benefit from this book, and certainly Primary children would.

OK. Ditch the comparisons and self-loathing. It’s time to appreciate who you are and act like it! Popular speaker Michelle Wilson invites women, in particular, to look at themselves and like what they see in Does This Insecurity Make Me Look Fat? (Deseret Book 2013, 168 pages in soft cover, $15.99).

Part One is about seeing ourselves as God’s offspring and viewing ourselves through His lens. Part Two, “Choose to Be,” discusses decisions, perceived failures, progress, and self-confidence.

Her message, related in a conversational tone, using personal experiences and musings on what she’s learned from them, is clear: God loves us, so why shouldn’t we love ourselves?