While some books light paths with their words, other books don’t need words to shine. Gideon Sterer and and Mariachiara Di Giorgio’s The Midnight Fair may be a wordless picture book, but its story is clear, compelling and utterly enchanting.

When trucks and trailers arrive at an open field, forest animals watch their home transform into a lively carnival, complete with roller coasters, games and throngs of people. But when the crowds leave for the night, the carnival truly comes to life. Raccoons and bears ride the roller coaster, their arms in the air as it rockets down the track. A deer exchanges a sprig of berries for French fries at the concession stand. A fox plays the ring-toss game (run by a deer) and wins a goldfish in a plastic bag for a prize. The animals crash bumper cars and wave to one another as they whirl by on the carousel.

Through clever use of framing and perspective, Sterer and Di Giorgio invite readers to be a part of each moment. We watch from above as furry friends spin in teacups below. We’re behind the counter as an earnest baby bear pushes his acorns toward us to buy a tantalizing pink and white ice cream cone. When dawn arrives, the animals vanish into the forest; the entire evening might have been a dream if not for the nuts and twigs bursting from every cash bucket as the watchman makes his morning rounds.

Despite all the merriment, The Midnight Fair is much more than a cute story about animals having fun. It’s entertaining and clever, but it never devolves into flippancy or silliness. Unhampered by the solidity and clarity of text, it maintains an ethereal aura of mystery and a sense of quiet dignity not often found in picture books with anthropomorphic animal protagonists.

Every inch of illustrator Di Giorgio’s art is captivating, from a scene in which the silhouetted creatures’ eyes glow in the dusk as they emerge from the woods to a poignant moment by the lake near the story’s end. But when the carnival lights come on, her illustrations become truly spellbinding. Gleaming and golden, The Midnight Fair radiates magic. It’s truly exceptional.

Acclaimed author and illustrator Peter Sís movingly celebrates Nicholas Winton, a “quiet hero of the Holocaust” in Nicky & Vera: A Quiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued.

After briefly depicting Winton’s childhood in England, Sís turns to his years as a young man in Europe, swiftly setting the stage and laying out the stakes: Germany, under Nazi rule, is beginning to flex its military might. Instead of going on a ski vacation in the winter of 1938, “Nicky" accepts a friend’s invitation to come to Prague and changes the course of history. 

Next, Sís introduces 10-year-old Vera Diamantova, an ardent cat lover in Czechoslovakia in 1938. When the German army marches into the Sudetenland, a region on the Czech-German border, Diamantova’s parents decide to put her on a train to England. Her mother has heard about an Englishman who helps children escape the Nazis. “The Englishman,” Sís emphasizes, using a larger font for this sentence, “was Nicky.” Winton ultimately saved a total of 669 children. 

Sís relates these events with expert pacing as he juggles Winton’s extraordinary feat; Diamantova’s departure from her home and subsequent new life in England, as well as the loss of her family to Nazi concentration camps; a timeline of the war itself; and the quiet lives both led after the war ended. Winton "never told anyone about the children,” Sís writes. Nicky & Vera concludes with an appearance Winton made on the popular BBC television program “That’s Life” in the late 1980s that saw him reunite with some of the now grown children he saved.

Detailed, intricate illustrations on a muted palette of earth tones capture it all. Sís frequently and movingly incorporates smaller drawings inside of larger images. In the blueish spread in which Diamantova arrives at the train station in London, Sís shows a silhouette of her figure from behind; he fills the silhouette with colorful scenes of the family and home she left behind, a beloved cat and horse and the landscape of her home country.

In a closing note that provides more detail about Winton and Diamantova, Sís writes that he always revered more celebrated individuals, but “had not paid enough attention to the reluctant and quiet heroes.” This tenderly crafted, visually layered and deeply reverent book will help young readers do just that.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Peter Sís reveals what he learned about heroism as he wrote and illustrated Nicky & Vera.

Author and illustrator Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson, who received both Newbery and Caldecott recognition for their 2015 collaboration, Last Stop on Market Street, team up for a third time on Milo Imagines the World, a nuanced tale about the fallacies of first impressions.

Milo and his older sister take long monthly subway rides together, though their destination isn’t revealed until the end of the book. With notebook and pencil in hand, Milo draws the lives he imagines for the people he sees on the train. These include a “whiskered man” whom Milo sketches returning home alone to a messy apartment, a primly dressed boy and his father depicted as living in a castle and a woman in a wedding dress who celebrates a festive wedding to a man.

When he arrives at the detention facility to visit his mother, Milo sees the boy he drew on the train and realizes that “maybe you can’t really know anyone just by looking at their face.” He begins to envision different lives for the strangers than those he drew on the subway. Perhaps the woman in the wedding dress married another woman or that whiskered man went home to his loving family.

De la Peña’s prose is precise and evocative (Milo is “a shook-up soda” of nerves), full of pleasant verbs (the train “bucks back into motion”). His story respects young readers by incorporating their complex interior worlds and the observant ways they attend to issues of class. When "a crew of breakers" exits the train, for example, and "faces still follow their every move," Milo imagines that the breakers will be subjected to racist micoaggressions when they step outside the subway.

Robinson’s signature collage illustrations bring Milo and his sister’s distinct personalities to life. Milo is bespectacled and wears an eye-catching lime-colored knit hat, and his sister is deeply distracted by her phone. Milo’s own simple drawings capture his childlike sense of wonder without ever patronizing.

A thoughtfully crafted addition to the small canon of books about children with an incarcerated parent, this sweet but never saccharine story is a classic in the making.

You might think that, if a mouse were to become a graffiti artist, they would use creamy yellow paint in tribute to delicious cheese. But the prolific and eponymous(e) spray-painter in Anonymouse favors a bright berry pink that pops against the brown and beige city buildings and streets where they live and work.

As digitally drawn by Italian illustrator Anna Pirolli, Anonymouse’s striking and funny acts of guerrilla art offer encouragement to other urban-dwelling animals who are surrounded by high-rises and concrete, rather than trees and grass. In the painter’s tiny paws, satellite dishes become big-headed flowers, trompe l’oeil technique turns a dumpster into a chic raccoon cafe, and a well-placed image of a pink-winged bat alerts a traveling colony of the flying mammals that a nearby warehouse is a prime hangout spot.

Anonymouse paints high in the sky and deep down underground, sending out cheeky signals to ants, birds and dogs alike. Animals and humans frolic in the faux shade of painted trees, enjoying the literal and figurative color added to their lives by the stealthy artist. But alas, Anonymouse must eventually move on. As the bright pink paint fades to a soft rose glow, the animals know their lives have been forever changed, and even more exciting, they begin to create art themselves.

Regardless of whether Canadian author Vikki VanSickle drew inspiration from the activist-artist Banksy or the Swedish artist collective Anonymouse, she has created a charming and clever rodent rebel whose work, she writes, “always made the animals of the city think.” Anonymouse is a poetic and visually witty paean to the power of creativity and the ability of art to inspire and unite us. Readers will enjoy wondering what Anonymouse could be up to right now and will surely consider their own surroundings in a new, imaginative light.

LeUyen Pham’s Outside, Inside addresses the subject of the COVID-19 pandemic for young readers with sensitivity and compassion.

“Something strange happened on an unremarkable day just before the season changed,” Pham’s narration begins. “Everybody who was outside . . . went inside.” The book’s first spread shows a bustling street filled with people going about their daily life. Two people walk dogs; a man rides a bicycle and a child rides a scooter; children greet each other on the stoop of a building; people carry bags of groceries. We see the same street on the next spread, but now it’s empty—save for a girl’s cat, who will serve as our guide throughout the book. The girl, who anchors the story, looks hesitantly out the window at the absence of neighbors on the street.

After emphasizing that this migration from outside to inside was something that happened all around the world, Pham pays tribute to the medical personnel and essential workers to whom the book is dedicated in two striking spreads. Detailed vignettes in a more restrained and muted color palette depict sobering and honest scenes of sadness, struggle, solitude and grief. Next, we peer into indoor lives, as Pham show us an out-of-work family opening bills at the kitchen table with expressions of dismay and a child grown weary of virtual learning. Throughout, however, she also shows us scenes of kinship, community and camaraderie. Families work, play and bake together; medical staff bring a birthday cake to a woman in a hospital bed. Highlighting another meaning of “inside,” Pham reminds us how “we were all changing a tiny bit inside.”

The book briefly addresses the reason for our indoor migration—“because everyone knew it was the right thing to do.” Pham doesn’t sugarcoat the impact that the pandemic has had on our lives, but COVID-19 also isn’t explicitly mentioned until a detailed and moving closing author’s note. Most children will have heard enough about the virus that laying it out explicitly in the text is unnecessary. Eagle-eyed readers, however, will notice the phrase “COVID 19” on a doctor’s whiteboard.

Pham (There's No Such Thing as Little) narrates Outside, Inside in the past tense, perhaps as a reminder that even this pandemic, too, shall pass. A brightly colored double gatefold imagines the day in the future when we’ll all be outdoors and near one another again. In the meantime, this deeply felt book will make waiting for that day a little bit easier to bear.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Author-illustrator LeUyen Pham goes behind the scenes of Outside, Inside.

A young girl stays in touch with her beloved grandmother, Popo, when her family moves to the United States from Taiwan in this exuberant picture book. Inspired by author Livia Blackburne’s personal experience of emigrating from Taiwan when she was 5 years old, the book also features the work of Taiwanese American illustrator Julia Kuo.

In plainspoken yet evocative first-person narration, the girl recalls her favorite memories of her grandmother, beginning from her babyhood: “I dream with Popo as she walks me in her arms.” Readers see the growing girl and Popo walking in the park, celebrating the new year with special foods and looking at a globe to find San Diego, where the girl moves with her parents. Even though they are apart, Popo remains part of the girl’s life as the two connect online, which is cleverly shown in a fun double-page spread of each person's screen, complete with the small reverse-camera image in the upper right-hand corner.

Kuo’s colors are bright and vibrant, while subtle details effectively capture the differences of daily life in the U.S. and Taiwan. Readers see Chinese characters on a wall calendar and the skyline of Taipei in the backdrop of the park. During their online video call, the protagonist eats a bowl of cereal for breakfast while Popo uses chopsticks to eat her dinner of noodles. In her new home, the young girl gradually adjusts and makes new friends, “kids with hair of every color and skin of every shade.”

Another clever spread shows two sheets of drawings the girl makes at school; she illustrates pictures of the English words she is learning alongside the Chinese characters. As she becomes more familiar with English, she begins to lose some of her first language, and its words become “hard to catch, like fish in a deep well.” But when they return to Taiwan for a visit, her mom reassures her that she can still hug Popo “as tight as before.”

I Dream of Popo balances the bittersweet experience of being separated from family with an affirmation of the enduring bond between grandmother and granddaughter. Its backmatter, which includes reflections and family photos from both the illustrator and author, adds context and depth to its depiction of the contemporary immigrant experience. This is a lyrical and heartfelt tribute to the power of love across geography and generations.

Claude and Manman usually walk Papa to the tap tap stop, where Claude sees people from his Haitian community boarding the bus on their way to the beach. The bus’s bright colors always catch Claude’s eye, but he has school and chores, and Manman says he can’t ride the tap tap.

Every day, Claude’s desire to ride the vehicle grows. He sees a woman carrying mangoes and dreams of mangoes; he sees a fisherman and fantasizes about “reeling in a jumbo fish”; he sees a woman carrying straw on her head and hopes one day he can weave a hat for Manman; and when he sees a painter heading to the beach, he longs to paint a picture of his own tap tap. Then one day after church, Claude’s dreams come true when Papa and Manman surprise him with a trip on the tap tap to the beachfront.

Author Danielle Joseph incorporates Haitian Creole words throughout I Want to Ride the Tap Tap, a joyous tale of everyday life in Haiti. Her ear for dialogue is particularly strong. “Bon bagay!” Claude often exclaims. The story provides context clues as to its meaning, though a glossary provides a specific translation (“This is good stuff!”). The days of the week, also written in Haitian Creole, provide the story with a satisfying structure.

Debut illustrator Olivier Ganthier’s images pop with vivid colors, especially in the exuberant closing spreads in which Claude has made it to the shore and finally has the chance to do all the things he dreamed of. These scenes have a palpable energy as they portray Claude’s jubilant Haitian community. Children everywhere know what it’s like to experience a day like this, when the week’s work is done and you can simply spend a day with the family you love.

Bear is a heck of a dancer, but because of his enormous size, the other woodland creatures think he’s mean and scary. Fortunately for Bear, his friend Coco, a tiny girl with brown skin whose curly hair peeks out from beneath her bright red hat, understands that this is just a bunch of “noodle strudel.” She knows how gentle, brave and kind Bear is—and she has an idea about how to show the rest of the forest, too. Together, the two embark on a journey through the wintry woods to follow words of wisdom from Coco’s grandmother, which she stitched into an embroidery hoop: “When life gets dark as winter’s night, share some kindness. Bring some light.”

To show kindness, Bear bakes cookies; to bring light, Coco makes lanterns. They traverse the forest and offer these gifts to Badger, Rabbit, Hedgehog and Skunk, but each time, the offering from the unwelcome bear(er) is shunned. It isn’t until the other animals witness Bear commit an act of unsolicited assistance that everyone realizes true kindness isn’t rooted in giving and receiving things. It’s about spreading love without expecting to receive anything in return.

These themes of kindness and welcoming those who are different aren’t particularly original, nor is the narrative element of sentient woodland creatures, but debut author-illustrator Apryl Stott’s talented execution offers a powerful reminder of why these motifs continue to endure in children’s literature. The friendship between Coco and Bear is downright delightful, and two brief moments in which little Coco offers comfort and reassurance to mighty Bear are especially moving.

Stott’s illustrations are warm and self-assured, and her visual storytelling feels like the work of a veteran. Coco’s grandmother’s embroidery hoop is echoed throughout the story via scenes set within circular frames. Stott depicts grumpy Badger in a frame of nettles, and when Coco leaps off the path into a waist-deep snowbank, the frame around her drips with icicles. Young readers will delight at all the imaginative details Stott packs into her images. In particular, a wordless double spread that reveals the interior of Bear’s den as he bakes cookies is one to linger over.

It’s impossible to resist the bighearted appeal of Share Some Kindness, Bring Some Light, a satisfying and accomplished debut picture book.

This reflective, observant book follows a family of four through a calendar year of small moments with a playful, spirited young girl serving as our guide.

Author Cheryl B. Klein keeps the text simple, using short, unpunctuated phrases—“First valentine / First cold / First crush”— while illustrator Qin Leng’s charming images capture the emotional ups and downs of childhood. Much of the book is composed of little vignettes that expertly pace the action. The “first crush” begins at the “first cold,” when our protagonist sneezes and a classmate kindly hands her a box of tissues. With crisp colors and fine lines, Leng delightfully extends Klein’s spare text.

Klein occasionally varies the rhythm of her phrasing for wry comedic effect. There’s a first new umbrella, then a first lost umbrella, followed later by a second occurrence of each. There’s a second crush, repeated fights with the girl’s brother (“Two hundred twenty-sixth fight with your brother”) and, as winter returns, second and even third snowfalls. As the year winds down, Klein seamlessly and subtly slides into marking “last” instances, rather than “first.” For example, waffles that were “first” in January are now the “last waffles” of snowy December.

The book is especially joyful when depicting the year’s seasonal gifts—the first “green in the gray” of spring, the first beach trip of summer, the first “gold in the green” of fall and, as the year comes full circle, the first silent night of winter. A Year of Everyday Wonders is a truly wonderful, wonder-filled picture book, perfect for revisiting in every season of the year.

Two brothers, memorably named Fox and Dodge, are planning their fifth trip to the moon in their spacecraft, the White Dolphin. Built using common household “odds and ends,” they keep the craft hidden behind the chimney on the roof of their house. Their goal for this trip is to build a fort on the moon’s surface, and they prep for this mission at home with models made from wooden blocks.

Told from the perspective of the younger brother, Dodge, A Fort on the Moon is filled with authentic—never patronizing—details that capture how children perceive the world. After the boys tell their mother they plan to build a fort on the moon, they observe that she “gets that look grown-ups get when they think you’re being cute.” Author Maggie Pouncey’s language is also remarkably childlike: The boys’ tools for shipbuilding, for instance, include “two diggers” and “two whackers.” Pouncey’s use of exclamation marks throughout the story is particularly effective in communicating the boys’ wonder—“We load our materials into the ship, things Mama called junk!”—and her occasional use of rich figurative language delights. Walking on the moon, Dodge reflects, is like "stirring the batter of the world’s biggest cake.”

Illustrator Larry Day brings the boys’ adventure to the page via relaxed watercolor and gouache illustrations dominated by a vivid, sapphire blue. His depiction of the White Dolphin is entertaining, constructed as it is with old umbrellas, tires, watering cans, cardboard boxes and the like. The boys, snug in snowsuits, sit in old car seats as they navigate the spacecraft. Expect lots of laughs when sharing this book aloud with young readers.

Though the brothers experience frustration in building the fort (moon dust gets on everything, and they run low on tape), the thrill of adventure dominates the story. Children will delight at the boys’ lunar antics and may even be touched by the brotherly bonding that occurs when Dodge realizes that, if it weren’t for his brother, he would have given up.

A Fort on the Moon marries art and story for a combination that’s truly out of this world.

A friendly scarecrow named Crow stands alone in a field, watching tractors go by and seasons pass. One winter, children build a snowman right next to Crow. After Crow finally says hello, Crow and Snow become friends. “Will you be staying awhile?” asks Crow, but Snow isn’t sure. Sadly, Crow watches Snow slowly melt as the days warm up.

When winter circles back around, Crow is thrilled to see Snow again, though he notices that this time Snow looks “a bit different.” For a second time, Crow has a friend to share his days with. But as winter fades, he must once again say goodbye to Snow. After multiple reunions and goodbyes, Crow is determined to tell Snow how he feels about him, but years pass without the children building another snowman. When “new children” finally appear, Crow gets his chance.

Illustrator Olivier Tallec’s uncluttered spreads in Crow & Snow feature a particularly inviting color palette of cool teals and greens, occasionally offset by warmly colored pink skies. Crow is a remarkably expressive character, particularly for a creature who is half stick, and Tallec has fun with the ways in which Snow’s appearance changes year by year, based on the materials that might be available to resourceful snowman-constructing children.

Author Robert Broder weaves straightforward but touching moments of dialogue into this story of loss and impermanence. “I will miss you,” Crow says as he watches Snow shrink before him. Broder balances these moments with subtle touches of slightly morbid humor, such as Snow’s utter inability to control his appearance—one year, he has a carrot for a nose and the next, a pinecone—and his powerlessness to control his fate when the weather changes. The spreads in which Snow disappears have a deeply felt poignancy, but the way this tender story ends infuses the whole thing with wonderful hopefulness.

This ode to love, and the importance of professing our feelings to those we love, speaks volumes.

All readers have books that feel like their “safe spaces.” Some of us retreat into fantasy or stories from decades past. Some seek laughter. Others find refuge in nonfiction or in intimate, confessional memoirs. Even the littlest readers among us need books to call home. A Story for Small Bear cradles a tale of playful curiosity and exploration in the warm, sheltering arms of home.

As winter draws closer, Small Bear and Mama have things to do before they can begin hibernating. They must make sure they have a warm winter den, clean fur and full bellies. It’s hard for Small Bear to say goodbye to all the forest things she loves, but if she works quickly, she will have time for the thing she loves most: bedtime stories from Mama.

Author Alice B. McGinty’s child-friendly narration embraces descriptive language, personifying the winter’s chill and making use of repetition and alliteration that will bring the littlest readers into her story as well as entertain the big ones. McGinty’s calm, even tone makes this the perfect last-story-before-sleep book.

Illustrator Richard Jones paints a world that feels vibrant and alive, even as it’s preparing for a long winter nap. His images have a lushness to them and a wonderful depth of field, as autumn leaves and spruce trees overlap with fallen pinecones and wildflowers in the book’s spreads. Rabbits peek out here and there, birds dot the branches and the last of the fall grass fills the foreground. The images have a near-tangible texture; the bears’ fur appears soft and warm, the cool lake water looks crisp, and you can practically hear the rustle and crunch of dry leaves. His autumnal color palette of warm russets, gleaming golds and pinecone greens is the story’s ideal complement. When winter finally arrives, it is equally tranquil and lovely; there’s no shocking bright-white backdrop to pull us out of this placid, reassuring world. Small Bear and Mama’s gentle, curious and loving facial expressions round out each cozy page. This is a book with no sharp edges.

The perfect book for fall, A Story for Small Bear has a simple message: Winter may be coming, but everything will be all right. Our house is cozy, you are safe, and we have plenty of stories to keep us company as we ride out the cold together.