Don’t Worry, Wuddles

Sharing is easy—as long as the item in question belongs to someone else. That seems to be the driving philosophy of this picture book’s indefatigable duckling narrator, who decides that Wuddles the sheep, a somnolent ball of curly white fleece, can easily spare a little wool to help ward off the coming winter chill. Seeing that Wuddles barely lifts an eyelid when the duckling appropriates a scarf for itself, it immediately appoints itself Wuddles’s woolly grantmaker, seizing more wool from the increasingly agitated sheep to fashion into a hat for Rooster, leg warmers for Goat, onesies for the Piggies, and so on. “Wuddles, aren’t you relieved?” asks the duckling, not waiting for an answer. “You can always count on me to do the right thing!” Now everyone is cozy and cosseted as the snow falls—except the actual benefactor, who has been quite thoroughly fleeced. If the hug-it-out ending provides an only temporary solution for chilly Wuddles, Duckling’s energy is comically propulsive, and watercolor and pencil illustrations by Judge (Forty Winks) are downright luscious, rendered in creamy whites, warm browns, butter yellows, and blush pinks. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)