In this picture book debut from British illustrator and animator Chloe Bonfield, readers meet a young boy named Jack, who is searching for “the perfect tree. Not to climb, not to draw, and definitely not to hug.” He needs a tree to hack and then stack, but the trees he first sees won’t quite do. Right when he’s about to give up, he hears from a woodpecker, who shows him the perfect tree, indeed: It’s a tree filled with a variety of other birds. Jack sees “birds and feathers” fill the air, and he’s filled with wonder.

He then meets a squirrel (whose own tree is filled with acorns and berries for the winter), followed by a spider. “Have you seen my perfect tree?” the spider asks. It’s decorated with a splendid web, glimmering in the rain. Jack then sees his own “perfect tree” after all, a beautiful willow to keep him dry from the rain.

Bonfield’s art, collaged 3D pieces that are enhanced digitally, are filled with silhouettes and shadows, and her spreads are busy. Despite this busyness, the composition (and the lighting on the three-dimensional elements) really works. She knows where to draw the reader’s eye in such a way that brings the bustling forest to life—including snappy moments of onomatopoeia (twitches and clicks and drips from both the forest creatures and the rain)—without tiring us. She plays with perspective in dynamic ways, and she knows when to slow things down. The moment when Jack glides among the trees, sliding down glistening spider webs, with all three of his new friends near, is a beautiful moment of light, shadow and movement.

It’s a sweet but never cloying story with delicate and dazzling illustrations. It reminds children that the forest doesn’t need our intrusion. Via Jack and his friends, Bonfield brings readers an ode to nature and all the majestic wonders of wooded landscapes.

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

The Hueys return for an illustrated trip through the world of opposites. If happiness is finding a coin for the soda machine, sadness is only a spilled bottle away. What’s the Opposite? starts at The Beginning and works through up and down, here and there, before tackling the heady concept of half-full versus half-empty. It’s enough to give a philosopher a headache; thankfully a Huey gets only a single crayoned curlicue’s furrowed brow.

Oliver Jeffers’ characters look a bit like thumbs, or Minions on a bad hair day—loose ovals with faces and as many stick arms or legs as the moment calls for. Even a horse in the book has a fully developed head and body perched atop four single crayon lines. Their colors pop against white backgrounds, so the tiniest quirk of a lip can suggest a big smile. When an unlucky Huey is shipwrecked on a hot desert island, things turn lucky when an electric fan washes ashore, then unlucky just as fast with the realization that there’s nowhere to plug it in. Victory, meet defeat.

Kids will love this book, which has plenty of details to seek and find, and parents will appreciate that it’s exuberant without being shrill. Oh, and What’s the Opposite of The Beginning? You can probably guess, but you’ll have to read the book to find out for sure!

Hop, written and illustrated by Jorey Hurley (Nest, Fetch), dramatizes a day in the life of a cottontail rabbit and her three small bunnies as they go about doing what bunnies do—nibbling grass and bright flower tops, playing tag, sleeping and staying on guard, all day, every day.

Part story and part science lesson, the text pulls no punches but depicts the dangers in the life of every rabbit we see leaping across our front yard or standing, frozen, in a meadow. The bunnies have run-ins with a hawk, a bumblebee and a fox. Luckily, they can listen, run and jump, and can burrow deep underground through tunnels to elude their predators. But when a woodchuck burrows into the other end of their den, the bunnies are on the move again. The book includes an informative author’s note about cottontails, which are common across North America.

Hurley’s springtime meadows are lovely and the images of bouncing bunnies will delight, especially when, safe and sound, they snuggle together to sleep and await the next day.

In each highly textured and patterned page, Hurley's previous work as a textile artist shines through. Parents and children alike will respond to the simple language and the clean, modern Danish feel of the illustrations.

Billie B. Little is the Founding Director of Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, a hands-on museum in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Bunny Dreams begins simply enough; bunnies hop, bunnies eat, bunnies cuddle in tunnels to sleep. But when they dream, bunny imaginations take flight, and a surprise awaits little readers—wings and stripes adorn frolicking, ABC-learning bunnies. But the biggest wonder of all is what they see when they wake up under a full bunny moon. Both a charming story and a captivating metaphor, Bunny Dreams will have you taking a second look at your backyard friends.

Peter McCarty’s latest book, while wandering into the realm of fantasy, retains the comfortable, cozy feel he has perfected. Fans of Hondo and Fabian will recognize McCarty’s distinct illustrative style with its realistically soft fur, sweet expressions and subdued colors. Each page is awash in springtime, with a kindly sun, swaying grass, bees, butterflies and a stray chicken. McCarty’s lighthearted text keeps pace with his illustrations, adding another storytelling layer.

Children will love the silliness of bunnies holding pencils and writing their names, and numbered rabbits and alphabet-strewn pages provide plenty of learning opportunities for the littlest readers. Objects of a bygone era (model cars, a rotary phone) add an aura of nostalgia and whimsy for adults.

This unpredictable story comes full circle, with the bunnies once again on solid, grassy ground. However, even as the bunnies’ dreams slip away, remnants of their imaginings remain, lingering in details. Perfect for cold winter nights, Bunny Dreams invites cuddles, giggles and just may spark conversation: What does your bunny dream?

A young girl, who lives in the Arctic tundra with her grandfather, yearns for more color in her surroundings. In her snow-filled world, she sees her fair share of white. She’ll occasionally see gray, but “gray is still a shade of white.” Nights don’t give the girl any more hope for color: Winter days in the tundra are as dark as night.

But the girl’s grandfather has a secret, and it’s a good one: the Northern Lights. One night, he leads his granddaughter to a snowy mountain, and they—and the friends they gathered on their trek there—take in the colors dancing across the sky and “forget all about the cold.”

Author Danna Smith lays out this tale in a present-tense, second-person voice (“When you live in the Arctic in winter . . . ”), which places the reader right in the center of the story and gives the book immediacy. She includes the types of details about snowy landscapes that will snag even city-dwelling children who live where there’s little of the white stuff. Even footprints are white when you live in the Arctic, Smith notes as the girl and her family and friends trudge up the mountain to watch the light show.

The book’s watercolors are dominated by grays, browns and whites, and illustrator Lee White manages to bring texture to the snow and keep the landscapes varied, despite the sameness that makes the girl weary. The two Northern Light spreads are vivid and shimmering with color. Both author and illustrator seem to be going for a genericized setting and grandfather-granddaughter pair. It’s not clear in precisely which North Pole region they make their home, and their igloo home and clothing are also not terribly detailed or specific. The bond between the two makes this a multigenerational tale; they each seem to be the only family they have for one another.

It’s a wintertime read, one that brings color to the coldest of days.

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

James Proimos, author-illustrator of Waddle! Waddle!, takes us into a day in the life of a jaunty little penguin, who only yesterday made a new best friend who happened to be a spectacular dancer. But as bad luck would have it, our little penguin quickly lost his friend and has shed a number of tears.

He sets out on a quest to find his friend, starting out with a waddle-waddle and ending in a belly slide. His first attempt leads him to a singer, not his amazing dancer, and the shrill voice of this new fellow blows off his hat and tie. The next is even worse, a horn blower who trumpets our little penguin upside down with his tongue hanging out. When he thinks he has finally found his dancing friend, he runs smack dab into real danger in the shape of a polite but hungry polar bear.

Luckily, his newfound singer and musician friends come to his aid, and he escapes the bear’s grasp. Will he find the mysterious new best friend with the dancing feet? A clever twist will amuse both reader and little listener.

Proimos illustrated Suzanne Collins’ popular picture book, Year of the Jungle, a Parents’ Choice Silver Honor Winner. Waddle! Waddle! will win over children’s hearts with its colorful, cartoonish illustrations and its simple message about the meaning and value of friendship.

Billie B. Little is the Founding Director of Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, a hands-on museum in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

In the opening author’s note of The Only Child, Guojing briefly discusses how her experiences as a child growing up under China's one-child policy in the 1980s formed her story. As a young girl and only child, she was often left alone when her parents had to work. At the age of 6, her father put her on a bus to her grandmother’s, but she fell asleep and woke to unfamiliar surroundings. From that memory grew this story, a hybrid graphic-novel/picture book tale more than 100 pages long.

A young and wide-eyed girl spends a morning alone and then decides to head to her grandmother’s via bus, but in this fantasy, when she falls asleep and then wakes on the bus, she's dropped off in a snowy landscape in the woods. She's terrified but then meets a mysterious and friendly stag who carries her up into the clouds. There, they make a friend and meet a majestic sky whale. Eventually, after a good deal of bonding, exploration and play, the stag flies the child home, where she greets grateful parents, who have been frantically searching for their daughter.

Guojing does many things well here, but best of all is the book’s expert pacing. She takes her time to establish the child’s loneliness and longing at the book’s opening, as well as the intimate bond between the loving stag and the child throughout the rest of the story. Soft, velvety pencil illustrations, adjusted in Photoshop, bring readers tender, close-up moments of the duo, and panels pick up the pace on many spreads, communicating loads of action and emotion. One striking and very dramatic spread from the inside of the whale is pitch black.

In this day and age of American helicopter parenting, it’s a story that stands out, and children may very well marvel at the child’s freedom. But it’s the touching return to parents who care that make the story a universal tale of home and belonging.

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

Bruce the bear leads a quiet, orderly life. He is particular about his food (organic), his friends (none), and is a determined grouch. That is, until his dinner plans go way off quack—I mean, track. After a slight cooking mishap, Bruce’s dinner eggs become noisy goslings. Bruce tries to return the goslings to their nest, but his unfortunate dinner episode follows him home. There is little that Bruce can do to reclaim his comfortable existence. Like a goose to open water, Bruce’s new babies are sticking around.

Author-illustrator Ryan T. Higgins (Wilfred) skillfully combines clever, dry-wit text with vivid pictures, artfully playing classic storytime themes against a contemporary backdrop. While the tale of bachelor-turned-reluctant-parent is familiar, images of Bruce trekking through the woods with his shopping cart and scouring the Internet for gourmet recipes keep the story quirky and current. Readers will giggle at Bruce’s lovably dour and stern countenance, knowing his external grouchiness hides a big heart. The four goslings are perfectly depicted in all their adorable, irresistible (if occasionally annoying) charm.

While full of kid-friendly humor, Mother Bruce doesn’t forget about his older readers. Adults will sympathize while Bruce carries the critters in a four-gosling baby carrier, grudgingly cooks for their picky taste buds and eventually attempts, unsuccessfully, to slingshot the adult geese into migration. Anticipation grows as summer turns to fall and hibernation season approaches. Will Bruce ever regain his empty nest?

The perfect read for any time of day, Mother Bruce will find its way to the top of your reading pile again and again.

“All begins cheerily” for some busy children whose daily experiences continually loop back to those three letters at the beginning of the alphabet. Awake Beautiful Child’s longest sentences are a mere three words, yet the book offers plenty to consider and enjoy.

Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s ABC sentences span a breakfast of apples, bananas and cantaloupe, but also include a photo taken at a birthday party (“Avoid blinking—Cheese!”) and the entreaty to “always be curious.” Gracia Lam’s illustrations juxtapose swaths of pastel with bolder details, many of which are extra ABC words for kids to seek and find. Some also recur, as when a cactus from the beginning of the story becomes a casualty of rowdy play later on. The cycle of a day—waking up in the morning, a refreshing afternoon nap, a busy afternoon full of activities and then the slow winding down toward bedtime—is captured sweetly here.

As if the extra ABCs illustrated throughout the book weren’t enough of a bonus, there’s also the amazing book cover: The jacket unfolds into a double-sided poster with still more visual treats to unpack. I’d be absolutely beyond cheered if this duo decided to tackle the entire alphabet in small batches. Awake Beautiful Child sure makes for a lovely beginning, and it’s one kids and parents both will love returning to.

With reoccurring images of crowns, tigers, teapots and spheres, Pamela Zagarenski’s The Whisper takes readers back to the fantastical world created in her Caldecott Honor-winning books, Sleep Like a Tiger and Red Sings from Treetops.

A red-capped girl who loves stories notices a mysterious book in her classroom. When her teacher lets her borrow this magical book of stories, the girl rushes home to read it. In her eagerness, however, the girl doesn’t notice the words spilling out behind her or the clever fox collecting the words in a net. At first the girl is disappointed when she only finds pictures. Where are the words to make the story? But a whisper on the wind reminds her that imagination can provide the stories, and with no rules to limit her imagination, the story can be different each time.

So begins a distinctive picture book adventure. Intricate mixed-media illustrations with wondrous animals and tiny folk in stylized costumes combine with elements reminiscent of Marc Chagall and Paul Klee. Instead of the text taking a prominent place, the girl reads the book along the bottom and provides prompts to her version of a story. Readers can follow along, alter or ignore the subtle text and make up their own story to the wordless pictures.

Throughout the story, the fox has been observing it all, and when the fox returns the words to the girl’s book, the girl finds she doesn’t need them after all. In a twist and a nod to Aesop, the fox realizes she doesn’t either. Zagarenski’s stunning creation shows imagination at its best.

In this tall, 56-page picture book import, originally published in Italy two years ago, readers explore two stories that meet in the middle.

Snowflake drifts through the sky, hoping to fulfill the dream of landing in an inspiring location. He considers the possibilities: Will he land on a building in a quaint town or even on a circus? On children at a playground? On a bakery window? Readers turn the pages of large, cut-paper snowflakes to discover Snowflake’s fantasy landscapes.

Readers can then flip the book to meet a drop of ink, waiting patiently inside her bottle, as she longs for her artist to “carry her into one of his wonderful drawings.” When the wind makes its way into the artist’s studio, paintings catch flight, and Inkdrop watches as the art dances before her. Cut-paper drops of ink reveal the artist’s colorful visions, as Inkdrop imagines her joy at having left her confinement to join one of the paintings and see the world through new eyes.

The two stories offer up distinctive palettes: Snowflake’s is predominantly white and ethereal, and Inkdrop’s black ink dominates. This makes the vivid paintings readers get to see, the ones that Inkdrop longs to enter, all the more striking.

When the wind blows forcefully enough to tip the bottle of ink out the window, Inkdrop is free. She meets Snowflake and feels immense joy. In the story’s dramatic gatefold spread, which sits in the book’s center and serves as the closing to each story, Inkdrop and Snowflake delight in one another’s presence, telling stories—and their “embrace lasted forever.” It’s an intricate, finely drawn spread, one to pore over for a while.

And it’s precisely this moment that is the book’s heart, this merging of two souls—perhaps they are soul mates always meant to be one—and the beauty that results.

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

Irish artist P.J. Lynch is known for illustrating books such as the beloved Christmas classic The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey, recently released in a 20th anniversary edition. Lynch’s new historical fiction title, The Boy Who Fell Off the Mayflower, or John Howland’s Good Fortune, the first book he has both written and illustrated, was inspired by the life of Pilgrim John Howland. Howland’s story struck Lynch as a “quintessentially American one, of a man who started out with little and who, through sheer doggedness and good fortune, went on to achieve great things.”

The tale begins with young Howland scurrying through the streets of London to help his master, John Carver, provision the Mayflower for her voyage. Once at sea, Howland and the others endure seemingly endless bouts of bad weather. Incredibly, when Howland is swept overboard in a storm, he's able to catch hold of a rope for the brief moment it’s illuminated by a bolt of lightning.

Lynch vividly shows the harrowing experiences of the colonists during the winter of 1620 to 1621, and recounts the generosity of the Wampanoag tribe—including Squanto—that befriended them. After Carver’s death, Howland could have returned to England but chose instead to stay in Plymouth. An author’s note informs readers that Howland married fellow Mayflower passenger Elizabeth Tilley and had 10 children.

Enhanced by a large format that showcases Lynch’s striking watercolor and gouache illustrations, this fictionalized account of Howland’s story will spark young readers’ interest in learning more about the Wampanaog and English people who encountered one another so long ago.

Deborah Hopkinson lives near Portland, Oregon. Her most recent book for young readers is Courage & Defiance.

In this thick picture book, geared at all ages (“preschool and up”), Dave Eggers pays tribute to an enduring American landmark, the Golden Gate Bridge. He takes a look at its conception, construction and unconventional orange hue in a country with predominantly gray bridges. Readers learn that its bold color is, in large part, thanks to architect Irving Morrow, who found the color beautiful and insisted upon it, despite opposition from many sides.

Eggers often writes directly to readers, sometimes actually interrupting or correcting himself. (“In the beginning there was a bridge. No, before that, there was a bay.”) The book takes its time introducing the need for the bridge and the area where it stands, the Golden Gate. The author even pauses to explain the terrain of San Francisco and the Bay Area. Some of these stylistic digressions are entertaining and funny. (“Have you been to San Francisco? Some of these things you have to see to believe. It is a strange place.”) Others are slightly distracting. At one point, he stops to point out, “This is true. This is a factual book,” but I’m not so sure children need that reminder.

Nichols’ construction paper cut-out illustrations are minimal, often using simple shapes to make a point, such as paper blocks of various colors stacked together on the spread where Eggers notes that much work was done before anyone even began the conversation about what color the bridge would be. “Isn’t that a strange thing,” he asks, “that a very large group of adults would undertake a project of this size, and not have a color picked out?”

Adults don’t always think things through, Eggers seems to be pointing out here and in other instances in the book. “For a good portion of the human race,” he notes elsewhere, “because something has not already been, that is a good reason to fear it coming to be.” Yep, we adults can be bad about that too, and children will understand and appreciate these adult foibles brought to light.

Thankfully, there are the Irving Morrows of the world, who stick to their guns.

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