Roly Poly

In this sprightly offering from the team behind Time for Bed, Roly Poly the polar bear thinks life is “grand”—until the morning he learns that the wee bear sharing his bed is his new brother, Monty: “But I never asked for a baby brother, and I don’t want one now!” His protests form a refrain that grows more emphatic—and provides resonant readaloud opportunities—as he becomes increasingly irked at playful Monty’s presence. Yet when Monty becomes stranded on an ice floe, Roly Poly has a change of heart and emerges a hero, and the two “lived happily ever after. Well.... Mostly.” Fox’s spare, wry text leaves readers ample room to embellish and personalize the story, while the mixed-media illustrations humorously portray the siblings’ interactions. Dyer fashioned the bears using needle felting, a process that involves poking raw wool with a barbed needle to alter the density of its fiber, and Birdsall (the Penderwicks series) helped Dyer stage the scenarios and then photographed them. The resulting, beguiling images have a 3-D quality and authentically capture the jumbled emotions that accompany the arrival of a sibling. Ages 4–8. [em](Nov.) [/em]