The Quiet Forest

It’s “a quiet, nothing-to-do forest,” rendered in pencil and digitally colored illustrations by Cushman (Wombats Are Pretty Weird) as grassy and green, with a placid pond nestled beneath shady trees. But the almost palpable sylvan stillness is quickly interrupted by a “mischievous” backpack-wearing brown mouse who swings on to a rabbit’s plate of extravagantly topped pancakes and swipes the whole dish, triggering a comic cascade of mayhem. Offsay (Challah Day!) assigns each unwitting participant an evocative italicized adjective: the rattled rabbit crashes into a bothered beaver; further down the line, a miserable moose is the result of having its en plein air painting impaled on its antlers. The now “seriously noisy” forest arouses the ire of a sleeping mama bear, but before another raucous response ensues, the forest itself intercedes with a calming, musical breeze: “Whoosh. Swish. Whoosh. Swish.” Everyone regains their composure, kindness is passed back up the line, and the forest is transformed into a lively, congenial community that “isn’t too loud or too quiet at all”—for the moment, anyway. For audiences that love quiet, and those that loathe it, the joyful resolution following this jolt of antic boisterousness should strike a resounding chord. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Nicole Geiger, Full Circle Literary. Illustrator’s agent: Kendra Marcus, BookStop Literary. (Mar.)