There Must Be More Than That!

In an era specializing in dark predictions, Yoshitake (I Can Be Anything) gives young readers a new way of thinking about what’s to come. “Our future is doomed,” an older brother growls to his little sister one rainy day. “By the time we grow up, things are going to be terrible.” The girl’s grandmother, however, counsels cool-headedness. “Grown-ups act like they can predict the future,” she says, but it’s never limited to one or two choices: “There must be more than that!” These words are all the encouragement the girl needs to visualize possibilities. Maybe, in the future, “someone always catches the strawberry you drop” (a robot skids under the table, bowl outstretched), or “your room has a zero-gravity switch” (brother and sister bob gleefully in mid-air). “Will I have to put up with that bully forever?” she wonders. “Nope! He might be abducted by aliens tomorrow.” It’s easy to smile at Yoshitake’s square-headed characters and endless stream of lighthearted thought experiments in this gently goofy book, which offers a hopeful corrective to grown-up pessimism. Ages 5–8. (Oct.)