Boney

In an open-ended picture book focused on a child’s internality, young, pale-skinned Annabelle, hiking with her father and dog, finds a good-size bone on the forest floor that piques her curiosity. She wonders if it might have once belonged to a deer, or a bear, or a wolf, each shown in dark silhouettes that call to mind cave art. Annabelle names the now-washed and beribboned object Boney, trucks it to the playground in a wagon, and tucks it into bed in a shoebox, using “rolled-up socks for a pillow.” That night, she dreams that she and a deer, a bear, and a wolf are running together through the woods. The next morning, she wakes up sad, and in the quiet scene that follows, Annabelle treats the bone with newfound solemnity. Sly, naïf-style colored pencil, watercolor, and digital illustrations by Tolstikova (The Bad Chair) contribute to an atmosphere of alternating lightheartedness and unease, while Fagan (Water, Water) focuses on Annabelle’s attentiveness to her own emotions and physicality (“She went to the mirror and looked at her own sad face”) in a poetic volume that raises keen questions about ephemerality, connection, and regard across the natural world. Ages 3–6. [em](Oct.) [/em]