(2) K-3 Adapted by Helen Mixter. Illustrated by Igor Oleynikov. After returning to his family with just one small fish, a father polar bear announces that they will have to move and find a place with more food resources. The four bears wander into a city, where they happily discover the dumpsters overflowing with treats. Then, seeking a place to sleep, they notice things that "look a lot like square icebergs" (apartment buildings) and move right into one. All is well until the food runs out. The bears look through the books in their new home hoping to get ideas about where to go next. They see images that tempt them--polar bears in a zoo; a snowy prehistoric scene complete with woolly mammoth; a moonscape--but decide, after watching a television program on Antarctica, to head there for the huge icebergs, tasty penguins and seals, and ice fields. First published in China, the story has the rhythm and spare text of an oral tale. "'I need a rest!' says Papa. 'I need more food!' says Misha. 'I need to sleep!' says Masha. 'This looks just right!' says Mama." Oleynikow uses a scratchy, textured style to give his atmospheric paintings depth. The polar bears are expressive and sometimes quite funny. Author and illustrator handle some heavy themes with a deft, light touch.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2023

(2) K-3 Translated by Elisa Amado. Illustrated by Mariana Ruiz Johnson. In this eccentric volume, Buitrago and Johnson provide suggestions addressing the titular theme. A guileless, wide-eyed frog in black coveralls performs each of the actions, some being generally straightforward ("Sit on a park bench and cut out paper dolls. Leave them as presents all over the place") and ­others more situational ("When you are at your aunt's house, you can free a bird," i.e., her pet. "It will always remember you"). ­Cheerful ­optimism abounds, with occasional welcome hints of pragmatism: "If you find a bee splashing in a fountain, help it out... If it gets angry...just run away. Anyway, what friend doesn't get cranky sometimes?" Every creatively interpreted spread, in subdued hues with rounded shapes and tidy black outlines, is chock-full of friendly-looking, personality-filled creatures of many different species--potential pals, all. And introverts, take heart. The best and most self-empowering advice for those who find themselves depleted after a long day of socializing appears at the end: "But if by late afternoon you get tired of making friends, just be by yourself and forget ­everything that this book has told you to do...learn to be your own best friend."

Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2022

(3) K-3 Translated by Elisa Amado. Illustrated by André Letria. A series of expansive wordless spreads begins this bleak and affecting picture book personifying the insidiousness and cruelty of war. Spare, hard-hitting prose describes the things that "war is" ("War is a machine for pain...the exact destination of all our miseries") and what it does ("War feeds on hate, ambition, and spite. War invades the gentle sleep of innocents"). Stark, imagistic illustrations--sepia-toned and shadowy--portray crawling insects and spiders and slithering snakes); recognizable imagery of war and violence (soldiers packed shoulder to shoulder, bombs dropping from the sky, a pyre of books, a KKK hood) effectively underscores the story’s message. An unflinchingly thought-provoking work.

Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz

(2) K-3 Translated by Elisa Amado. "That was a safe, agreeable place." So begins the tale of a poultry farm upended by the arrival of a group of capybaras (escapees from hunting season), but astute readers will notice that the narrative does not tell the whole story. The chickens may be "comfortable and everyone knew what she was supposed to do," but we see the farmer (shown only from the shoulders down) carrying off the occasional hen who is likely to become supper. When the capybaras arrive, looking a bit stunned and definitely out of place, their "hairy...wet...too big" bodies sharply contrasting with the delicate, light shapes of the poultry, the hens announce a set of rules: "don't make any noise," "don't come near the food," and, worst of all, "don't question the rules." Happily, it doesn't take long for a tiny chick and the smallest capybara, in a series of wordless panels, to make friends. In short order, the capybaras and the hens learn to live together, safe from dogs and farmers, and when hunting season ends and the capybaras prepare to head home to their waterways, the hens decide to join the capybaras in a life of freedom. A final wordless page gives a glimpse of a future when the capybaras and now-free-range hens befriend neighboring sheep. The understated narration pairs brilliantly with the simple but expressive illustrations. Soderguit draws in shades of black on cream paper with accents of red to tell a gentle but subversive story of a community of animals coming together to survive. Read this one with Martin Waddell's Farmer Duck for International Workers' Day.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2021

(2) K-3 In this wordless Russian import that explores themes of freedom, scale, and perspective, a girl rests on a backyard blanket under a bright blue sky. Ants wander onto her nose, leading her to discover an anthill, and then a caterpillar, a beetle, and even more critters. After she catches a grasshopper and places it inside a large terrarium jar, the book's perspective shifts briefly, with images shown in a hexagonal honeycomb pattern showcasing what can be interpreted as the grasshopper's memories of freedom. When another grasshopper is added to the jar, a fight ensues. A black cat appears and shatters the jar by knocking it to the ground while the girl distractedly swings on a tree swing. This frees the wrangling creatures and brings nature into balance. While the story spotlights its natural setting, elements of the human-made world (houses, an airplane in the sky, etc.) are ever-present. Vibrant blues and greens abound in the art, with lots of shadows and implied panels to pace the unpredictable and playful narrative. Lines are rendered in a variety of colors, creating a striking contrast between figure outlines and negative space; the bright white of the page, for example, is used for the protagonist's skin tone as well as the neighborhood structures.

Reviewer: Elisa Gall

(2) K-3 Translated by Helen Mixter. Illustrated by Jiu Er. The motif of an orphaned wild creature taken and raised by humans is a classic trope, here embodied in a realistic story about a baby moose adopted by the hunter who had inadvertently killed the calf's mother. The setting is, matter-of-factly rather than exotically, contemporary Inner Mongolia, and the hunter, a kind old man who names the moose Xiao Han, Little Moose. Xiao Han's growing size (and hunger!) provides plenty of gentle slapstick humor as he becomes increasingly too much for the hunter and his reindeer herd; the hunter's encroaching mortality offers an additional emotional layer. Watercolor and charcoal pictures--some sepia-toned, some delicately colorful--are plentiful and detailed, with a good variety of picture sizes, from small homey vignettes, several to a page, to double-page spreads showing the magnificence of the (sometimes comical) beast and the breadth of the forest landscape.

Reviewer: Roger Sutton | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2020