Me Tall, You Small

German author-illustrator L’Arronge, whose doll-like animal characters and understated sight gags may remind readers of Patrick McDonnell’s work, offers an amusing overview of the parent-child dyad starring two weasels: “Me” is the parent/narrator, while “you” is the offspring. She begins with the eponymous, empirical observation—which also establishes the book’s playful, concise, and dialectic style—but quickly moves on to more interesting comparisons and contrasts, which play out in a range of distilled settings. The little weasel has its parent beat when it comes to energy reserves (“You whoop. Me droop,” says the big weasel, exhausted after giving the child an airplane swing) and ingenuity (the little weasel builds a precarious stack of objects to get to a deliberately out-of-reach cookie jar). But both animals like to get goofy in the kitchen and chomp on their sausage dinner at the table. Being winsome without being wince inducing is no easy task, and this playful, tender book may inspire real-life parent-child pairs to come up with some me-vs.-you comparisons of their own. Ages 2–5. (Mar.)