With unadorned, heartfelt prose and idyllic images, Braun (I Love My Mommy
) conveys just how wonderful it feels to spend a day alone with Daddy. The narrator is a bear cub, and both the cadence and reportorial tone of his words easily could have been transcribed from a preschool show-and-tell. “On our way home, Daddy raced me. And I won!” Braun's acrylic pictures strike a lovely balance, as he places his genial, naïf-styled characters within majestically scaled landscapes (in one spread, father and son are dwarfed by a broad, cloudy sky, as the sun peeks from behind distant pine trees). Daddy, by turns strong, goofy (he lets the cub perch on his stomach and feed him berries), reassuring and firm (there's no waffling when it's time to go home), makes the whole world seem endlessly expansive and utterly cozy at the same time. Ages 2–5. (June)
