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      Small Print: reads for the young people in your life

      Books may be foreign creatures to some kids, but Kyo Maclear doesn’t wallow in lamenting the fact. Instead she makes a book the focal object in The Good Little Book, illustrated by Marion Arbona (Tundra, 40 pages, $18.99, ages 4-9). When a misbehaving boy is sent to the study to “think things over,” in boredom he reads “the good little book” — even though it doesn’t look splashy, isn’t popular and has no proper jacket. But the ordinary-looking book ends up becoming the boy’s favourite and only reading matter, his loyal companion everywhere, until one day, he loses it, to his great concern and distress. How can a book that doesn’t even have a “proper jacket” survive in the world?

      Maclear steers clear of “reading is good for you” and focuses instead on a boy’s affection for a dearly loved object and sorrow at its loss. But with the affection is something more subtle, a celebration of the comfort of rereading, of having a favourite book that’s the only book for you. And Arbona’s art works well at aiding and abetting that play of imagination and feeling. Cockeyed perspectives, vivid colours and comic, surreal scenes show how dynamic, how animated, the love for a favourite story can be. Funny and thoughtful.

      By contrast, there’s a reassuring calm to Mr. Postmouse’s Rounds, written and illustrated by Marianne Dubuc (Kids Can, 32 pages, $18.95, ages 3-7). Mr. Postmouse pulls his delivery cart from burrow to nest to cottage, leaving letters and parcels for bears, bunnies, snakes and other wild creatures.

      Or perhaps, not-so-wild creatures, as the charm and interest in this book comes from Dubuc’s depictions of the creatures inside their domestic settings. For every delivery, we see though the walls of house, nest or burrow. The Crocs’ house is awash with water; Mrs. Turtle sports a well-appointed mobile home. Each species of bird has its decor — a pigeon with its map of the world; a magpie with its glittery loot.

      Variety and detail, humour and home life will make this stand up to multiple viewings.

      Akiko Miyakoshi’s The Tea Party in the Woods (Kids Can, 32 pages, $18.95, ages 4-7) is all about not being at home — at one’s own home, at any rate. When Kikko’s father forgets the pie he was to bring to grandmother, Kikko runs out after him into the wintery forest. But the person she’s following is actually a bear! Kikko finds herself at the animals’ tea party — where bear and lamb, boar, badger, caribou and deer, feast together and invite her to join them.

      Soft greys deepen to blacks in Miyakoshi’s charcoal, pencil and ink illustrations. Animal faces and heads peer down at Kikko; racks of antlers, bristling cheeks, and round inhuman eyes loom from across the tea table. The pages are charged with uncertainty and strangeness, a shadow of threat that softens to warmth and welcome as Kikko joins the party. A superb, atmospheric mix of fairy tale and dream, wild woods and home comfort.

      Close observation of animal behaviour is at the centre of Danielle Daniel’s Sometimes I Feel Like a Fox (Groundwood, 40 pages, $18.95, ages 4-8), a series of poems in which Daniel introduces readers to totem animals of the Anishinabe tradition. “Sometimes I feel like a . . . ” begins each short poem, and then describes qualities associated with bear, deer, beaver, butterfly, moose and more. Animal and human qualities commingle — the bear is “strong and confident”, the porcupine “innocent and curious” — quietly emphasizing how human feelings and qualities reflect those of different creatures.

      Daniel’s illustrations underscore that understanding — each one shows a child wearing an animal mask. The stylized masks, soft colours and big eyes of the children convey a seriousness, almost an otherworldliness, to the animal/human relationship. With its explanatory Author’s Note, this is informative — but it’s also haunting and thought-provoking in its orientation to the animal world.

      Deirdre Baker teaches children’s literature at the University of Toronto.

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