Wild Feelings

Milgrim uses animal metaphors (and costumes) to acknowledge that feelings can be overwhelming. “Do you ever feel... as stubborn as a mule?” he asks, as a father attempts to send his donkey-suit-wearing daughter off to bed. A boy who is afraid of a dog is “as chicken as a chicken,” and when a girl feels “totally and completely alone,” she appears in a wolf suit, howling in a moonlit desert. Sympathetic language (“Of course you do. Everyone does”), the revelation that it isn’t just kids who get moody, and the friendly energy of Milgrim’s cartooning make this a humorously reassuring take on the idea of allowing even the wildest emotions their time and place. Ages 4–8. Agent: Brenda Bowen, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. (Aug.)