“Everywhere you look, there are living things.” So we learn in this latest offering from a talented author-illustrator team from Great Britain. It’s not easy to translate complex biological principles and concepts into a picture book, but Nicola Davies and Emily Sutton manage to do just that. Their previous collaboration, Tiny Creatures: The World of Microbes, explored unseen organisms. Here, Sutton’s jubilant watercolors bring a classic, almost retro look to Davies’ simple, yet informative text about biological diversity.

One unnamed young girl appears in many of the illustrators. There’s a fanciful aspect to design, as our young guide appears in diverse settings and landscapes, sometimes as an observer, other times as a teacher, collector or investigator, complete with safari hat, notebook and pen. (The scene with the girl before a table of mushrooms of all colors and shapes is marvelous!)

The presence of a human in many of the landscapes also underscores an important message of this book. While new species may be found each year, extinction is a reality. In one scene, we find our human girl before a museum case full of extinct specimens. “We have learned that ever kind of living thing is part of a big, beautiful, complication pattern,” Davies writes. “The trouble is, all over the world, human beings are destroying pieces of the pattern.”

Many: The Diversity of Life on Earth is especially appropriate for young children and offers numerous possibilities for learning about colorful plants and animals. And while a bibliography and information on environmental activism would have added to its usefulness in a classroom setting, it is sure to be enjoyed by nature lovers of all ages.

With precise, poetic language and rich colors, author Barbara Herkert and illustrator Lauren Castillo bring to life the legendary author E.B. White.

Readers first meet young Elwyn White at home, sick in bed. It is here he makes a mouse for a friend, eventually carrying him to the family’s horse barn. Young Elwyn loves animals. Herkert plants the seeds in these childhood moments for the famous children’s books Elwyn, who later becomes “Andy,” grows up to write: We see him as a boy, sitting in the barn with his friend, the mouse, staring up a spider’s “masterpiece” of a web.

Herkert spends most of the first half of the book focused on White as a child. He dreaded school yet learned to love writing. With vivid imagery and pleasing alliteration, she captures his idyllic childhood and budding love for language: “As Elwyn grew, he surveyed the summer stars. . . . He jotted his reflections in a journal.” In college, he begins his writing career in earnest, and soon after that is inspired to write Stuart Little while dreaming on a train ride. The last part of the book gives a fine-tune focus to his life with his wife and family at their home in Maine. Here, he writes Charlotte’s Web. Just as in his childhood, he “basked in the seasons, the peace of the barn, the beauty of the world.”

Castillo’s thickly outlined, textured mixed-media illustrations communicate much warmth, with deep reds and oranges and intimate pastoral scenes, whether it’s young Elwyn with his animal friends or elderly Andy in his barn, mesmerized by a spider in her web. In this beautiful spread, we see the silhouette of a pig pointing right to Andy and the spider, with the land, water and a setting sun right behind him.

Inspiring.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

Both a compelling story and an intimate look at ancient life, Nile Crossing shines with the ancient Egyptian canon—hieroglyphics, the Nile and scarab beetles—and will fill multiple roles in any library.

Against the backdrop of Egypt’s lush Nile River and the bustling city of Thebes, author Katy Beebe introduces readers to Khepri, a serious, curious and introspective child on his way to school for the first time. Using the Egyptian language of hieroglyphics to illuminate Khepri’s story, Sally Wern Comport’s illustrations feel like hieroglyphics come to life: vibrant and detailed, yet resonating with the style of ancient Egypt. As though painting on papyrus, Comport uses color and texture to create the dense night, the lush vibrancy of the Nile, the warmth of Khepri’s home, the hum of Thebes.

For those interested in ancient Egyptian culture and life, Nile Crossing provides an insider’s view. Imbued within the tale and the artwork are the Nile River’s vital role, the significance of the gods and the value of the land and family. While it seems Khepri’s story ends too soon, readers will be delighted to find passages about ancient schools, papyrus and ink, as well as the first hieroglyphic lesson he learns. A glossary of terms and titles for further reading round out this brilliant book.

Well-researched and passionately created, Nile Crossing might be one of the most fascinating, educational and unique books of the year. Beebe writes about her lifelong fascination with ancient Egypt; this book could very well launch a new generation of Egyptologists.

Transforming a well-known poem into a picture book is precarious work—even more so when you’re dealing with the words of an American icon. It seems an all but impossible task to ensure such a book would appeal to readers of all ages, but Miyares does just this with his reworking of Langston Hughes’ classic poem “Dream Variations,” first published in 1926.

With its eye-catching watercolors and picture book format, That Is My Dream! offers a new generation easy entrée to one of America’s seminal poets. But, as a work of recontextualization, That Is My Dream! speaks in a voice not wholly Hughes’ own. The words have not changed; the telltale rhythms and rhymes remain. But the tenor has shifted, if only subtly.

Though visually intriguing, Miyares’ deft brushwork presents a fairly conservative take on Hughes’ original. Rather than emphasizing resonances between Hughes’ dream of racial equality and acceptance and the dreams of modern-day minorities, Miyares draws the reader’s gaze backward toward historical oppressions—African-Americans forced to the back of a bus, relegated to “Colored Only” water fountains. Further, its presentation of a stereotypical family, headed by a man and woman, all but erases the original poem’s subtle nod toward living in the closet, a particularly interesting decision given the long-running debate around Hughes’ sexuality.

For all its political trepidation, That Is My Dream! is an engaging work, both verbally and visually. And, like Hughes’ best poems, it offers readers a glimpse into the heart of one whose dreams of equality and acceptance were deferred, time and time again.

A mouse meets a wolf in the forest one morning and is gobbled up. He fears for his life—until he hears another creature inside the wolf. The mouse is surprised to discover it’s a duck, sleeping comfortably in his bed. The two dine together, the duck telling the mouse how much he loves living worry-free inside the wolf. When he was outside the creature, after all, he lived in constant fear of being swallowed up.

Out in the forest, when a hunter threatens to kill the wolf, the duck and the mouse decide to defend the duck’s home, bursting forth from the wolf’s mouth and scaring off the hunter. The grateful wolf promises the two, now free from the wolf’s belly, whatever they’d like. In the next spread, readers see them back inside the wolf, their home, having a ball.

It’s the ultimate in joining ’em if you can’t beat ’em, this decision by the duck to define his own terms for freedom and comfort by reshaping the power dynamics with his enemy, the wolf. “I may have been swallowed,” the duck says, “but I have no intention of being eaten.” He’s vanquishing the enemy by being consumed by him.

It’s a story packed with funny details—from the knives and candles of the duck’s wolf-belly home to the makeshift warrior gear the duck and mouse wear when charging the hunter. The dramatic dialogue is entertaining (there are several utterances of “Oh woe!”). And the amorphous dark shadows of the forest are beguiling in Jon Klassen’s hands.

Mac Barnett and Klassen do it again, bringing readers a story they’ll wolf down.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

One tiny mouse, clutching a crumb, takes off across the world. Big-eyed and resolved, despite its small stature, it heads out over a landscape enormously larger than itself. Where is it going? More importantly, why? Great Big Things is a powerful tale about courage, determination and the wisdom to recognize the truly big things in life.

What lucky readers we are, when two perfectly matched artists collaborate in a picture book. Kate Hoefler and Noah Klocek tell a story that is both unassuming and fathoms deep. Hoefler, author of the poignant Real Cowboys, creates exquisite poetry; brief sentences make the grandest gestures against Klocek’s bold backdrop. Like a hiker conserving energy on a long journey, Hoefler doesn’t waste a word, as description and alliteration tell a tight, compact tale.

Klocek (who also works for Pixar) illustrates with a bold, passionate hand. His deep colors and soft-edged images are both imposing and still slightly fanciful. The sharp grass, strong winds, the chill of the sea—they all seem tangible and full of movement, while every landscape has myriad stories of its own. Without dialogue, the vastness of the world—dotted with the smallness of the mouse—gives us the sense of struggle and determination. We know there must be something larger, vaster, more eternal pulling it forward. And somehow, we know that the mouse will get there.

Both a grand journey and an effective metaphor, Great Big Things is a stunning, multilayered story with a very simple message. Keep moving forward; there are even grander things ahead.