Setting five verse stories in “the North-east of England,/ the great British outdoors,” debut author Cowie pens a collection of fanciful stories around a visiting grandmother who shares bedtime tales with each of her grandchildren. In the first, a child invites a gnome, a dragonfly, and other companions on a low-key walk to Muggleswick Wood. The other stories involve a boy finding a magic May bug that can grant wishes, a grouchy brownie ridding a stately home of a pompous new owner, an elderly major battling a busy garden mole, and a potentially fantastical ride to a ball. Throughout, ink and wash vignettes by Mackesy (The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse) blend E.H. Shepard–style shapes with Quentin Blake–like energy. Broad humor (the mole-eradication scheme spatters the major’s house “with fish guts and poo”) alternates with idyllic rural beats (“A huge harvest moon/ sulked low in the sky,/ as the boys and girls fondly/ hugged Granny goodbye”) across these nostalgia-tinged bedtime treats, which take myriad beats from classic British children’s works. Characters are portrayed with pale skin. Ages up to 5. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/30/2024 | Details & Permalink

When young Jonty Gentoo escapes from the zoo, he’s inspired by his penguin aunts’ tales of their home: “And there, where the sun shines all night and all day/ Are thousands of penguins, who slither and stroll/ On the snow and ice all around the South Pole.” After squeezing through a gap in the fence and undertaking a long, lonely, and increasingly chilly journey, Jonty is informed by a friendly polar bear that he’s arrived at the North Pole, where there’s nary a penguin to be found. Jonty is eventually befriended by a migrating arctic tern, who guides him on a sea voyage southward, until Jonty reaches the real South Pole, which fully lives up to his aunts’ promise of penguin paradise. Prior collaborators Donaldson and Scheffler create an impressively doughty protagonist, meanwhile helping readers to compare environments and gain an appreciation for both arctic terns and the plentiful biodiversity between the poles. A brief overview, “Amazing Birds,” concludes. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/16/2024 | Details & Permalink

Vibrant prose by McKinney and delicate, meticulously rendered images by Obaldstone animate this survey of a year in an arctic tern’s life, and its migration from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back. Establishing terns’ qualities, early pages describe the birds guarding a nest against predators (“WHIZZ! ZIP! Fearless terns divebomb the mink”). Tiny Tern is a juvenile, portrayed with a partially gray body and dark beak that makes it easy to pick out in dramatic spreads of orange-beaked adults wheeling and banking in the sky. Heading for the Antarctic, the terns eat and sleep on the wing, “riding thermal air currents./ Rising on updrafts,” and pressing through storms. Once they arrive, terns find “warmth, food, almost endless days of light” as the flock dives for fish to gather strength before heading north again. In tracing a remarkable migration, this work highlights the tenacity and endurance of this small seabird, which lives across the globe “in two summers every year.” More about arctic terns concludes. Ages 4–7. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/16/2024 | Details & Permalink

In a comical introduction, C.C. Cecily, Senior Secretary of the Fairy Tale Fan Club, describes at length fielding “Where are they now?”–type queries from curious humans to fairy tale icons (“If necessary, I add my own comments,” Cecily notes). But the fan letters printed throughout this work reveal much about the so-called fans, many of whom write in distinctively British snark. To the emperor of “new clothes” fame, one notes: “Gutted, mate! You must feel like a proper plank!” Another asks Sleeping Beauty, “You seem to have no personality. I mean—who are you?” The fairy tale protagonists, in turn, seem more tetchy than enchanted in their responses: Humpty Dumpty complains of being “unfairly anthropomorphized and labeled,” while the Little Mermaid replies, “No, my best friend is not a tropical fish. I’m from Denmark.” Though the fairy folks’ correspondences do occasionally go on, Ayoade’s clever phrasing and epistolary structure prove both sturdy and irresistible, and pen illustrations by Roberts, rendered in precise, fine lines and intricate cross-hatching, provide wry visual asides throughout. Characters are portrayed on the book’s cover with various skin tones. Ages 8–12. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/16/2024 | Details & Permalink

An outing to catch the Loch Ness Monster leaves a sensitive child protagonist questioning the term monster in this riff on the Scottish legend. On a day out, Rhona’s fame- and fortune-hunting uncle Allister (who’s “a little odd, but also a lot of fun”) plans to lure fabled beast Nessie using pancakes as bait. After the duo systematically surrounds their boat with floating flapjacks, Allister’s project seems destined for failure. But when Rhona alone encounters a gentle creature with “big, warm eyes, like those of a horse,” the heroine’s perspective on the outing shifts, and she begins working against her relative’s questionable aims. Martens’s artwork uses fine lines to foreground the figures against foggy lake scenes washed with layers of moody color, while lengthy paragraphs from De Keyzer provide a mystical meditation on making assumptions and connections. Human characters are portrayed with pale skin. Ages 6–11. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 08/16/2024 | Details & Permalink

This strangely moving, legend-like story told in two parts starts with Laki, a very old, blue, hulking creature, whose world is upended when small, child-like, orange Hekla falls into his life “just like the samara of a sycamore tree.” Hekla brings both chaos and meaning to Laki’s existence. Laki sits, head in hand, as Hekla scales a bookcase, knocking things off the shelves. Yet Laki cares deeply about Hekla, and most of all about keeping the tiny creature away from the lake outside: “Not the lake, Hekla,” Laki repeats. When Hekla no longer needs a caretaker, and Laki’s life comes to an end—an event whose mythological dimensions soften the blow—Hekla’s landscape experiences profound changes. Via dynamic, ambitious painting and writing, Schneider doesn’t just create a myth but also imagines geological-level shifts with crystalline intensity. Ages 6–9. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 08/16/2024 | Details & Permalink

The Aztec emperor Montezuma, this work’s protagonist, opens the story in a bad mood, refusing to undertake his duties and roaring, “I don’t want to see anyone because I don’t feel well!” Everyone at the palace reacts with worry, taking him all manner of elaborate gifts and making sacrifices to no avail. As the figure continues to rage, someone has an idea: a band of monkeys gathers cacao beans, and Montezuma is presented with—and soothed by—a steaming cup of xocolátl. Imagining the court of Montezuma in folktale cadences while introducing key facets of Aztec life, Gómez Benet creates an emperor who will surely resonate with young readers learning to work through big emotions. Digital illustrations with hand-drawn textures by Solís Montes de Oca vibrantly illustrate the events in a color palette of bright teals and reds. Characters are portrayed with various skin tones. A Náhuatl glossary concludes. Ages 4–9. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/16/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this first of the Everlasting Tales series, Moore and Li retell the story of the moon goddess Chang’e and her legendary romance with a skilled archer, Hou Yi. Both human, the married couple are deeply in love, and they share that love with their village and beyond, spreading compassion and goodwill. When 10 blazing suns appear in the sky one day, threatening to destroy Earth, the two set off to protect the land and are rewarded for their bravery with an elixir of immortality—enough for only one—that disrupts their bond with a trusted ally. Li’s ethereal textured illustrations, made using both analog and digital tools, portray an idyllic scene turning disastrous under blazing suns. Alongside lush landscapes and portraits, this modern rendition of the classic tale refreshingly centers, per an author’s note, on love’s “strong power, wide reach, and ability to transcend distance, physical being, and even time.” Back matter includes a condensed version in Mandarin. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 08/16/2024 | Details & Permalink

This fairy tale mash-up from Rockliff and Jose lobs scraps of fairy tales at readers as fast as they can recognize them—and foils expectations, too. Crisp, cartoon-style illustrations open on a princess trapped in a tower with long... hair? No, a long nose that grows every time she fibs. When a prince arrives to save her, he begins to climb a beanstalk, arriving not at the top of the princess’s tower but at a giant’s house. There, a huge table is set with three bowls: “He tasted the porridge in the first bowl, but it was too hot. The second bowl of porridge was too cold.” And the third? It’s “just tapioca pudding.” As the story continues, Little Red Riding Hood carries a basket full of frogs, and the wolf pricks its paw on a spinning wheel. It’s a fast-moving romp that’s also a challenge, inviting readers to identify the fractured fairy tales’ fragments. Characters are portrayed with various skin tones. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 08/16/2024 | Details & Permalink

Painting each of the story’s beats in illustrations inspired by a distinct art style, Mello creates a tale about Griso, “the last of the unicorns,” on a lengthy search for “another just like him.” The being appears first as a folk form, covered with spirals, interlocked hands, and other motifs—an image, per back matter, that’s based on seventh-century Germanic art. Spreads that mimic Tang Dynasty murals, 18th-century Indian paintings, 20th-century surrealism, and more follow the wandering beast, and 10th-century Egyptian decoration inspires the painting in which Griso, at last, meets a mythical creature that’s just as unique and weary as he is. Velvety storytelling text appears throughout, such as that which describes Griso settling down for the night: “And so he went to sleep, in the lap of the night, and then the night itself drifted off, too.” Griso may be the one and only, but he’s rendered in many different variations throughout this veritable unicorn tapestry, which demonstrates, with power and immediacy, each style’s particular way of seeing. A list of art styles and notes concludes. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/16/2024 | Details & Permalink