With their distinct patched eyes and adorable, roly-poly bodies, it’s no wonder that pandas cause a frenzy at any zoo lucky enough to house them. But you might be surprised to learn that until 1936 very few people in the world had ever seen one of these shy, beloved animals. In Mrs. Harkness and the Panda, author Alicia Potter presents a daring and nearly forgotten story of one woman’s journey to find a panda and bring it to the United States.

Ruth Harkness was a New York socialite; Mr. Harkness was the true explorer. When her husband died in China while searching for a live panda, Mrs. Harkness decided, against her friends’ admonitions, to continue the expedition. After taking a ship to China, having her husband’s explorer clothes tailored to fit her, and taking on a young, dashing companion named Quentin Young, she was nearly ready. With 22 pieces of luggage and hired help along the way, she set off on the long, arduous adventure through rugged mountains.

Melissa Sweet’s mixed-media illustrations, created with watercolor, decorative papers, old postcards, block prints, calligraphy and real-life objects, lend a scrapbook feel to Harkness’ journey. The effect continues with her discovery of a baby panda, which she names Su Lin and holds in her arms as she returns to waiting reporters in the United States. Recreated newspaper clippings show the instant and widespread “Panda-monium!” The endearing story concludes with the placement of the panda at the Brookfield Zoo and an actual photograph of Harkness and Su Lin.

Although Harkness’ methods would probably be criticized these days, she’s credited for showing a pluckiness rarely seen today and drawing attention to the endangered panda’s survival. This snapshot of her thrilling find will secure the panda’s place as a favorite animal for youngsters everywhere.

Angela Leeper is director of the Curriculum Materials Center at the University of Richmond.

Elliot is a quiet, reserved boy who likes to dress in tuxedos while his equally quirky father always sports chartreuse green plaid suits. At the aquarium’s Family Fun Day, Elliot sneaks off from the crowds and becomes amused by the penguins, which resemble him with their own black feather tuxedos and proper posture. When he asks his father for a penguin, of course, his father assumes he means a stuffed animal and gladly hands over 20 dollars.

After stowing a penguin he names Magellan (after the explorer, who happened to be another dapper guy) into his backpack, Elliot stealthily tries to replicate Antarctic conditions in his bedroom with an inflatable swimming pool and an air conditioner set to freezing. The hilarity continues to mount as Elliot attempts to hide the penguin around the house from his absentminded father (who has a hidden exotic animal of his own).

In outstanding picture books, the text and illustrations work in tandem to tell the story. In One Cool Friend, Toni Buzzeo’s sharp writing and Caldecott Medalist David Small’s expressive illustrations, rendered in pen and ink, watercolor and colored pencil, brilliantly blend to set up the comedy. The mostly black-and-white illustrations resemble the attire of Elliot and his penguin, with splashes of color adding effect and highlighting their instant bond.

Observant readers will find plenty of clues about the father’s traveling profession and his rare pet. Both Buzzeo and Small have outdone themselves in this sure hit.

Angela Leeper is director of the Curriculum Materials Center at the University of Richmond.

Amy Krouse Rosenthal, author of the popular 2009 picture book Spoon, has written another funny, sweet story that, according to the subtitle, is less a sequel than a “change in place setting.” The reader need not have read Spoon to enjoy Chopsticks, but the latter will certainly inspire you to read the former.

While the protagonist Spoon in the earlier book learns to appreciate his own talents and not be envious of others’ abilities, the Chopsticks have the opposite problem. How can you be independent and unique when you have a partner who can do everything that you can do? How do you learn to do something on your own when all your life you’ve done things that required two of you? After one Chopstick suffers a break and must be still and recuperate, the other Chopstick is left to figure out what he can do by himself.

Written in a style that every child can relate to—with a few perfect puns thrown in as well—Chopsticks is both enlightening and wonderfully silly. Illustrator Scott Magoon’s colorful pictures brilliantly show off Rosenthal’s lively story. Like Spoon, this book is sure to be a hit with readers of all levels.

In a beautiful new collaboration, writer Julie Fogliano and illustrator Erin E. Stead capture the long, slow season of renewal. Instead of eye-popping flowers and gobs of glorious greens, this picture book begins: “First you have brown, / all around you have brown.” This is the way spring is, especially around my home in New England, where April and even May can be dreary, cold and brown.

There’s nothing at all dreary, however, in And Then It’s Spring, as a boy and his dog plant vegetable seeds and wait for them to grow. The story follows the days of endless waiting, worry and hope as the boy and his dog stand patiently in sun and rain, waiting for signs of life.

This delicate tale is also filled with immediate, easily accessible fun. A bevy of animals—including birds, a rabbit, a turtle and even bears—helps keep watch over the seeds’ progress. The woodblock and pencil drawings by Stead, a Caldecott Award-winning artist, are pitch perfect, full of quiet anticipation. In one scene, Stead shows the boy, his dog and a rabbit with their ears to the ground, while below are labyrinths of activity as ants, worms, mice and chipmunks travel through underground tunnels, and garden seeds sprout deep roots.

Finally, of course, after weeks of waiting, there comes that magic day: “but the brown isn’t around / and now you have green, / all around you have green.” The boy lazily swings in a tire swing over his garden, barefoot and with his face turned gleefully upward, being warmed by the lovely spring sun. The garden finally comes to life in this subtle ode to hope, patience and rebirth.

Based on the real-life story of a special box that linked a mother and son, The Kiss Box is a sweet and simple picture book about a love so strong that distance can’t diminish it. This nostalgic charmer—reminiscent of mother-child classics like The Runaway Bunny—will pull at the heartstrings of any mother separated from a child and reassure any little one who is anxious about Mama’s departure.

In an author’s note, Bonnie Verburg explains that the inspiration for the story came from a “remarkable gift” her son received when he was very young. Verburg is a longtime children’s book editor and her son’s godparents were the noted author-illustrator duo Audrey and Don Wood. The Woods presented Verburg’s son with a small jar, to be filled with kisses and used as a reminder of love when mother and son were apart. Years later, after the kiss jar became dented and worn, Verburg made a “kiss box” for her son to take on a long trip.

In Verburg’s new picture book, delightfully illustrated by Henry Cole (Jack’s Garden, A Nest for Celeste), Mama Bear informs her Little Bear that she is going away on a short trip. The uneasy look on Little Bear’s face tells the story: This little guy isn’t happy about Mama’s departure and will need plenty of loving encouragement before they part.

Mama takes her son on a picnic and patiently explains that they can send love to each other even when they’re separated. “I can’t stay home,” Mama Bear tells him. “But I can leave you a hundred kisses to keep you company. And every time you miss me, you will have all those kisses.”

Little Bear makes his own special container for Mama’s kisses and goes to sleep clutching the box, safe in the knowledge that she is thinking of him wherever she is.

The soothing outdoor scenes where much of the book is set are lovingly depicted by Cole, who used childhood memories of a favorite spot (his uncle's farm) as inspiration. Butterflies, birds and turtles hover nearby as mother and son discuss the upcoming trip and their unbreakable bond.

The tender message of Verburg’s story has timeless appeal. And what could be a better activity for Valentine's Day than making a "kiss box" to share with a child, grandchild or other special little one in your life?

It is no surprise that David Petersen (creator of the Eisner Award-winning comic book series Mouse Guard) attributes his inspiration to cartoons, comics and tree-climbing. Readers of his debut picture book, Snowy Valentine, could easily believe this author/illustrator spends much of his time perched in trees, watching the daily lives of woodland creatures. In the spirit of The Wind in the Willows, Petersen offers a charming portrayal of the sweet, subtle relationships among the animals in a snow-covered forest.

On Valentine’s Day, Jasper Bunny heads out in search of a gift for Lilly. He seems undeterred by how small he is (even in relation to his own impossibly large ears) as he seeks gift recommendations from his neighbors. However, he can’t knit like the porcupines, Mrs. Frog’s chocolate-covered flies won’t do and the raccoon’s flowers have wilted in the cold. Jasper narrowly escapes Teagan Fox’s gift for his vixen—a rabbit stew swirling with potatoes, onions and (oh, irony!) carrots.

When Jasper is about to give up, his ears drooping and his red coat dripping, he exclaims, “I have nothing for Lilly.” High above, Spalding the cardinal sees Jasper’s true gift—an enormous heart tracked in the snow. Lilly steps out of her burrow to see “the heart he had made for her . . . and she loved it.”

Petersen’s ink and digitally colored illustrations are full of personality, movement and light. Their precision in capturing the temperatures and textures of winter is unmatched, from the low-hanging sun leaking through the skeletal trees to the contrast of a fire’s glow with the purples and blues of the forest. Breathtaking bird’s-eye spreads make Jasper seem so very small, yet when he is just about to give up, the illustrations reveal his power to do great things.

Young readers, no matter how small, will enjoy seeing just how big the gift of love can be, as well as their own ability to give it.

When Blue Met Egg is a delightful story about a spunky bluebird named Blue who lives in Central Park. When a snowball flies through the air and lands in Blue’s nest, Blue adopts the newcomer, mistaking it for an egg, and taking it everywhere for several wintry months.

Newcomer Lindsay Ward combines this charming story with funky illustrations created from cut-paper collages and sketches, taking readers on a bird’s-eye tour of New York City. Blue and Egg travel to Columbus Circle, the subway, an art museum, the opera, the top of a skyscraper and to a telescope pointed at the Statue of Liberty. A wonderful fold-out section features Blue and Egg perched atop the Brooklyn Bridge.

Look closely at these illustrations and you’ll see bits of newspaper in Blue’s nest, skyscrapers fashioned from test answer forms, crossword puzzles and graph paper in the Central Park snow, maps in the East River. The beauty of Ward’s style is that these fragments are a seamless part of each illustration: present, but not overpowering the art. Blue’s nest appears so cozy that you can practically feel its softness, while the snow appears to fall from the sky in a panoramic skyscraper scene.

Ward moves the story along with gentle humor, as Blue unsuccessfully tries to share a hot dog with Egg, or reads The Golden Egg to her friend. Finally, Blue tries to feed Egg soup as Egg begins to melt, but (as with the hot dog) it doesn’t go well.

When Blue Met Egg is about hope, friendship and undying optimism. When Egg melts, Blue panics, but ultimately finds happiness: She discovers a pink flower in Egg’s melted snowball puddle, and exclaims, “Egg, you’ve bloomed!” Blue always sees a glass as half full, which is a sweet, lasting message for young readers.

Deborah Hopkinson is the kind of writer who puts the accent on the “story” part of the word “history.” If you look back at her work for young readers, from picture books to middle grade nonfiction, you’ll find she uses this approach carefully and in a way that brings the reader right into the time and story. Even if the reader had little interest in the topic at the beginning, she or he finds this new place or time or person just as fascinating as Hopkinson does. It’s a special gift.

This time, as we near the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens, she tells the fictionalized tale of Charles Dickens’ childhood in A Boy Called Dickens. And what a childhood it was, downright . . . Dickensian. Told in the first person, there is a sense of mysterious immediacy that draws the reader right into the story.

“We are here to search for a boy called Dickens. . . . There are ragged children here, to be sure, scrambling for bits of copper and wood to sell.” The reader finds Dickens and he is not on his way to school (he has long since sold his books) but on his way to work—10 hours a day at a blackening factory, where he and other boys make shoe polish. And if this isn’t enough, he spends his weekend visiting his family in debtor’s prison. When his family is released and no longer needs his income, “Charles is still sent off to work ten hours a day, six days a week.” And how, reader, does Dickens keep going? He tells stories to the other boys and writes them down, filling them with “pickpockets; a miserly old man; a young gentleman with great expectations; a proud heartless girl.”

Adding to the feel of the place—the old London of child laborers, squeaking rats and debtor’s prisons—are John Hendrix’s atmospheric mixed-media illustrations. Using pen and ink, acrylics and charcoal, it’s the charcoal that lets the reader know what life was like for everyone, even children, in Dickens’ time. The soot and smog serve as indicators that things were far from easy for Dickens and his fellow workers. When Charles’ father is shamed into letting Charles quit his job, the tone of the illustrations lightens considerably, a visual cue that things will get better for this little boy with big stories and an even bigger dream of becoming a writer.

This fascinating slice of life will allow young children to understand the life that inspired A Christmas Carol and Oliver, stories they are likely to know. And if they don’t know these stories, Hopkinson’s fine book (with a very interesting author’s note) will certainly pique their interest.

A second grade teacher at the Ensworth School in Nashville, Robin Smith served on the 2011 Caldecott Committee.

One thing leads to another, an adage proven delightfully true in Stuck, the latest in a string of visually distinctive and endearing picture books by author-illustrator Oliver Jeffers.

A native of Northern Ireland who lives and works in Brooklyn, Jeffers has won awards and admirers for several previous books that showcase his imaginative style, including How to Catch a Star, Lost and Found and The Incredible Book-Eating Boy.

In Stuck, young Floyd—a stick figure sporting a red-checked shirt—starts a crescendo of trouble when he gets his kite stuck in a tree. Throwing a shoe to dislodge the kite, Floyd finds that the shoe gets stuck, too. He decides to throw his other shoe, then a cat named Mitch, a ladder, a bucket of paint . . . and on and on, until the tree is cluttered with objects large and small, including the proverbial kitchen sink.

Jeffers’ childlike lettering style and brightly colored mixed-media illustrations give Floyd’s misadventures a joyful spin. The conundrum of the stuck kite is a problem to be solved, not a reason for irritation or despair. From the cover—which shows the letters of the title entwined in the branches of a tree—to the final moonlit illustration, Jeffers’ artwork is quirky and fun, adding to the story’s considerable charm. One page shows the resourceful boy balancing a huge orangutan on his head as he prepares to lob it into the tree. On another spread, a friendly whale who happens to be “in the wrong place at the wrong time” chats with Floyd before getting his trip to the treetop.

The book has something of a surprise ending (involving a saw) but we’ll keep our account of Stuck spoiler-free. Suffice it to say that for Jeffers’ fans and those new to his work, his latest picture book is a high-flying delight.

Two patient little pigs turn an unfortunate incident into an opportunity for cooperation and friendship in Inga Moore’s delightful new picture book, A House in the Woods. This comforting and tenderly told tale will captivate little ones and any adults lucky enough to share it as a bedtime story or group read-aloud.

The two pigs (who, like all the animals in this story, walk hilariously upright on two legs) have built nice homes for themselves in the woods, one a den, the other a hut made of twigs. After a stroll, the pigs are disappointed—though never angry or petulant—to discover that a moose and a bear have taken up temporary residence in their tiny homes and wrecked them in the process.

After pondering the “pickle” of their homelessness, the four friends decide to pitch in and build a big new house where all of them can live comfortably. A crew of beavers, all sporting hardhats, is hired to help with construction, and payment in peanut butter sandwiches is promised.

English author-illustrator Inga Moore is best known for the lush and beautifully detailed landscapes in her illustrations for new editions of the classics The Wind in the Willows and The Secret Garden, as well as animal stories she has both written and illustrated (A Big Day for Little Jack and Six-Dinner Sid, among others). In A House in the Woods, leafy fall scenes of the woodland are combined with wonderfully expressive drawings of the animal characters. In one picture, the two dainty little pigs walk hand in hand with the bear while the excited moose—arms spread wide—describes just how big their new house can be. As the building of the house begins, children will enjoy watching the progress as trees are cut, stones are moved, cement is mixed and timbers are raised.

It is hard to overstate the charm of Moore’s magical illustrations, rendered in pencil, pastel and wash. The soft glow of the woods, the pink haze of sunset after a long day’s work and the flickering flames in the home’s new hearth all add to the sense that this is a warm and inviting world. When the book’s final scene arrives, and the four friends spend their first cozy night in the new home’s moonlit bedroom, young readers and listeners will be tempted to curl right up and join them.