Mr. Watson and Mr. Nelson live together in a “big, honking house with a teeny-tiny yard in a big, honking city.” Though Mr. Watson only acquires three chickens, before the couple knows it, there are 456 chickens in their home.

As author Jarrett Dapier's perfectly paced storyline and illustrator Andrea Tsurumi’s colorful, clean-lined artwork show, Mr. Watson’s Chickens take over the house, and the snowball effect of nearly 500 chickens in one small abode is very funny. Tiny chicks stage a play in the breadbox, chickens in bathing suits practice synchronized swimming in the bathtub, and there’s even a musically inclined chicken named Aunt Agnes who belts out a lively song (“Shooby-doo, wonky-pow, bawka-bawka in da chow-chow.”) at all hours. A cross-sectional view in one dynamic spread makes it clear that the home is “teeming with birds.”

Mr. Nelson eventually gives Mr. Watson an ultimatum: Either the chickens go, or he does. The two set off for the county fair to find new homes for the chickens, but chaos ensues when Mr. Watson trips, knocking over the cages and scattering chickens everywhere. Eventually there’s a happy ending for all the birds, especially Aunt Agnes, who finds a place in the spotlight.

Dapier’s prose is full of tenderness and spunk. When Mr. Nelson tells Mr. Watson he might leave, Dapier writes that Mr. Watson knows “his heart would be a broken egg” without Mr. Nelson. Depictions of gay couples are still uncommon in children's literature, particularly in picture books, so the depiction of Mr. Watson and Mr. Nelson's lovingly quirky and (mostly) harmonious relationship is commendable, as is the inclusion of a cheesemonger at the fair who is referred to by a nonbinary pronoun.

Tsurumi’s illustrations playfully extend the story. At the county fair, all chickens but one (Aunt Agnes, of course) are accounted for. The page turn reveals a Where’s Waldo?-esque spread of the fair from an aerial perspective. But good luck spotting Aunt Agnes, as Tsurumi fills the spread with decoy chickens—chicken-shaped balloons, an information kiosk topped with a giant chicken, a person in a chicken costume handing out flyers, even a sand chicken in the sandbox. Choices like these make Mr Watson’s Chickens an enjoyable and exuberant read.

This is one of the year’s most entertaining and bighearted picture books. You might even say it’s in fine feather.

In The Welcome Chair, friends and acclaimed decadeslong mainstays of children’s literature Rosemary Wells and Jerry Pinkney team up to tell a moving, memorable and quintessentially American story.

Inspired by Wells’ own ancestral history, the tale begins in the early 1800s as a young Bavarian boy named Sam sets off to achieve his dreams in the United States. A carpenter’s apprentice, Sam builds a lovely rocking chair that is handed down from family to family. As the years pass, each owner adds their own legacy to the chair, carving the word for welcome in their language at the top of its back panel. The story of the chair becomes the story of its people. There’s a Civil War soldier who fights against slavery, a determined Irish immigrant, a pair of nuns from the Dominican Republic, a compassionate doctor who works for the Red Cross, an infant orphaned by an earthquake in Haiti and more.

Although The Welcome Chair has a fairly high word count for a picture book, Wells’ straightforward narration keeps the story moving. Every line is considered and earnest, and the text is full of vivid descriptions. Pinkney’s illustrations are mesmerizing and iconic, covering every page with tiny, intriguing details. There’s a sketchy feel to his linework that gives the images dimension and a historical feel that’s both inviting and thoughtful. When paired with a soft, muted color palette, the effect evokes the way we often imagine history looks. Pinkney’s ability to capture the specifics of time and place while maintaining the story’s legendary spirit is a true gift; I cannot imagine an illustrator better suited for this story.

The kind of book that deserves to become a modern classic, The Welcome Chair pulls together themes of family, hard work, compassion, kindness and community in an honest and loving way. The book ends with what feels like a pause instead of a stop, because the chair’s story—like our stories—will continue. Who else will sit in the chair and rock their baby to sleep? Who may read or do their homework, curled up on its seat? What kind of futures might we imagine while perching on its sturdy frame? A tribute to America’s history as a nation of immigrants, The Welcome Chair truly welcomes all.

Author-illustrator Julie Morstad explores the complex and abstract notion of time in Time Is a Flower, a thought-provoking picture book. She gets the most conventional definition out of the way first: “Time is the tock tick tock of the clock and numbers and words on a calendar.” But Morstad is more interested in the enigmatic and often evolving ways in which children experience time. “But what else is time?” she asks readers directly.

Answers to this question come to vivid life through metaphors that highlight nature and its underlying laws. Time is a seed that becomes a flower, then the flower begins to fade and its petals fall off “one by one, or all at once!” Time is also a growing tree, a delicate web carefully crafted by an “elegant spider” and a butterfly that was once a caterpillar. It’s a spinning planet that brings night for one child but day for another. The book also explores other temporal joys and frustrations, such as our growing and changing faces and bodies, the power of memories and photographs, the tempos of music and dance, and quiet moments spent with people we love.

Morstad’s crisp, fine-lined illustrations convey a hushed and wondrous tone. Her spreads are uncluttered and spacious, with grayscale pencil drawings of children and colors that pop off the page. The book’s notably large trim size and generous 56-page length are fitting: Time is an immense notion that contains multitudes.

Near the end of the book, Morstad briefly poses two questions that have stumped physicists for millennia: “Is time a line? Or maybe a circle?” Rather than venturing an answer, her humorous resolution is a reminder that sometimes life’s immediate pleasures trump its unanswerable metaphysical quandaries.

With realism and a strong thread of empowerment, author Kao Kalia Yang shares a story based on events she experienced as a child living at Thailand’s Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in From the Tops of the Trees.

Yang captures the rhythms of camp life from the start. Her family sits in the shade of a large tree that provides “a great umbrella of cool.” She and her cousins play while the adults sew and discuss the war that forced them to cross a treacherous river to reach safety. “They are scared to return to the old country. They are scared to go to a new country,” Kalia reflects.

Yang hints delicately at the difficulties of camp life in a way that’s well suited for young readers. After she hears the adults talking about war, Kalia’s father reassures her that she’s safe. “Your hands and your feet will travel far to find peace,” he tells her. When she wonders why she must live behind a gate and whether “all of the world [is] a refugee camp,” he puts her on his back and climbs a tree to give her a glimpse of the wide world that awaits her.

Illustrator Rachel Wada uses linework to direct the reader’s attention, bringing some elements into sharp focus and allowing others to recede into the background. While many of the book’s scenes are full of joy, Wada’s earth-tone palette conveys the limitations of the camp’s environment, which is devoid of the lively colors readers are used to seeing on the pages of many picture books.

The spreads in which Kalia and her father climb the tree and gaze far out past the borders of the camp to see mountains in the distance “at the place where the sky meets the earth” are wonderful. Readers will feel as though they’re climbing alongside father and daughter and sharing their awe-inspiring view of the vast freedoms the world has to offer.

The author’s note makes Yang’s powerful story even more impactful. She includes a photograph taken by her mother that shows her in her father’s arms among the treetops. She also describes the lives she and her family went on to lead beyond the confines of the camp’s walls. Rooted in one family’s specific experience, From the Tops of the Trees offers an inspiring and universal vision of hope.

Time is one of life’s biggest mysteries—and one of its greatest challenges. Author-illustrator Torben Kuhlmann explores the concept of time in another wildly imaginative mouse adventure, Einstein: The Fantastic Journey of a Mouse Through Space and Time.

Kuhlmann’s earlier books have explored flight (Lindbergh), space travel (Armstrong) and the ocean (Edison). All are lengthy picture books (this one has 128 pages), which allows plenty of room for his yarns to unfold. Their large trim size showcases a marvelous array of Kuhlmann’s finely detailed illustrations, ranging from luminous full-page spreads to comical spot illustrations that chronicle their heroes’ exploits.

In Einstein, said hero is an inquisitive, unnamed mouse who has been eagerly anticipating “the biggest cheese fair the world has ever seen,” only to discover that he has missed the fair by one day. His crushing disappointment makes him wonder, “How could one turn time backward?” and prompts his determined quest to do so. After physically trying to stop a variety of clocks and then consulting a fellow mouse in a clockmaker’s workshop, he eventually ends up in the patent office where Albert Einstein once worked. He studies Einstein’s theories and builds a time machine that transports him back to 1905, where he meets the legendary scientist.

Einstein is perfectly paced and full of suspense (Beware a menacing cat named Chronos!), and Kuhlmann’s humor shines in both text and illustrations. Early on, for instance, the narrator wryly points out that “The term ‘pocket watch’ wasn’t quite right from a mouse’s perspective.” Later, after one of Einstein’s books hits him on the head, the mouse ties an ice cube on top of his throbbing noggin. Scrumptious details like these fill every page; in fact, on that same spread, observant readers will see that the mouse has built a ladder with matchsticks for rungs to reach the top of his chalkboard.

Kuhlmann’s sepia-tone illustrations are so glorious because of the keen attention he pays to how things might look from a mouse’s perspective. His unique ability to combine fun, facts, science and biography makes Einstein a real triumph.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Einstein author-illustrator Torben Kuhlmann reveals what he has in common with his mousy heroes.

When it comes to animals in picture books, bears have a long and storied history. Large or small, woodland creature or friendly plush toy, their contributions are undeniable. Jonathan Stutzman and Dan Santat’s Bear Is a Bear more than earns its place among the ranks of Winnie, Corduroy, Paddington, Little Bear and more.

Although this Bear is a teddy toy, Santat depicts him as an actual bear. When the winsome Bear is introduced to his little girl, she is a baby gnawing on a wooden block and he is “hopeful and shy.” He lowers his hulking body down onto the rug, lies on his tummy and smiles his most pleasing smile. The connection between them is instant: The baby attaches herself to Bear’s head like a suction cup (“Bear is a snack.”) before shooting snot directly at his face (“Bear is a tissue.”). Bear is undeterred, and soon he has become a “warm, soft pillow” on which the child drifts off to sleep.

As the girl grows up, Bear plays many parts, always going along with whatever she wants to do. Together, they dress up for tea parties, dig for buried treasure and peer up at the stars through a telescope. Bear is a “brave protector” in a scary thunderstorm and a tissue, again, when the girl reads a tear-jerking novel. When the girl goes off to college, Bear becomes “a scholar” and “a piece of home,” but eventually he is “a memory . . . covered in dust” in a trunk. But Bear is not forgotten, and soon he has a new role to play in the life of someone very important to his little girl.

Throughout the book, Caldecott Medalist Santat (The Adventures of Beekle) portrays Bear as a gentle giant who quickly earns a place in readers’ hearts. Santat’s illustrations are friendly and humorous, sure to remind adults of their own plush childhood friends who may also be tucked away in boxes. Stutzman’s language is gentle and has an appealing rhythm that’s ideal for bedtime. The book’s circular narrative and refrain of “Bear is a bear full of love” make for a satisfying read-aloud that’s charmingly nostalgic with just the right amount of sweetness.

Author-illustrator Hudson Talbott shares his personal experience of growing up with dyslexia in A Walk in the Words, a picture book that will help other “slow readers” feel seen and, refreshingly, celebrated.

In descriptive prose, Talbott takes us back to his childhood. An avid artist, he struggles with reading: “A whole page of text looked like a wall—keeping me out.” Long sentences are overwhelming, and he is the slowest reader in his class, which leaves him feeling ashamed.

Talbott’s bright watercolors playfully convey his early fear of books. On one spread, books (spines down and flapping like birds) chase him. In another, a book with all text and no pictures morphs into a purple monster with long claws. “ME EAT PICTURES! You read!” it growls.

As we see Talbott’s boyhood self “lost in a world of words,” his illustrations bring a forest metaphor to life. Young Talbott stands in a foreboding copse of trees while branches filled with long, complex words (“trepidation,” “impenetrable,” “undulating,” “ineffectual”) snake ominously around him.

But enough is enough. Talbott decides to “picture” his way out by looking for words in text that he knows and letting them “lead me into the story.” He also realizes that being a slow reader shouldn’t scare him and that many brilliant minds also found reading difficult. Here, Talbott imagines a “Slow Readers Hall of Fame” filled with the likes of Sojourner Truth, Babe Ruth and William Shakespeare.

Talbott does not mention dyslexia specifically until his author’s note at the end of the book. Whether a child is dyslexic or merely gaining reading fluency slower than their peers, they will appreciate all that Talbott does here to lift the stigma around those who don’t read quickly: “Slow readers savor the story!” he jubilantly exclaims as he depicts himself knocking down his literal “Wall of Shame,” a densely constructed barrier made of blocks of text.

A Walk in the Words is a welcome tale for readers everywhere who know that relishing a story at your own pace brings tremendous rewards.