Hurry Home, Hedgehog! A Bilingual Book of Sounds

Yang continues her series of English/Mandarin Chinese board books with the story of a hedgehog racing to get home before a storm. Her simplified gouache paintings picture the spiky brown hedgehog crawling over green fields covered with spiraling grasses, windblown cattails, and fallen autumn leaves, the storm providing ample opportunities for onomatopoeia: “Crack! Baroom! The sky sounds angry.” Chinese characters appear alongside the English narration, and a pinyin translation at book’s end allows readers to see how sound effects translate—some, like the “ping pang ping pang” of rain “fall[ing] hard like soybeans,” sound nearly identical in both languages. Simultaneously available: Squirrel Round and Round: A Bilingual Book of Seasons. Ages 2–5. Agent: Deborah Warren, East/West Literary Agency. (Jan.)