Review_CHILDREN’SReview_CHILDREN’S Review_CHILDREN’S64 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ SEPTEMBER 9, 2019
A small rabbit searches widely for a cake ingre-
dient in Bond’s debut (reviewed on this page).Picture Books
Something for You
Charlie Mylie. Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
$17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-374-31235-0
A bighearted maximalist offers a mini-
malistic gift in Mylie’s picture book debut.
When a mouse in an orange jacket drops
a cake by a friend’s house (“I’ve got some-
thing”) and discovers her tucked in and
ailing (“Oh no! You’ve got something,
too”), he tends to her with care. And after
making tea, opening the window, and
putting on some Chopin nocturnes, he
promises a return visit—and a gift.
Tender, softly colored ink-and-wash snap-
shots with a classic feel show the mouse
setting off on a search. He wanders
through a pebble- and garbage-strewn
path (where he fills his pockets with
blooms, “some for me, some for you”),
through a drainpipe (“this is mine, too,”
he notes, hefting a shell to his ear), and
hiking up a rocky hill. There, he finds and
wrestles free an enormous purple thistle:
“This will be just for you.” An unexpected
storm steals the blooms away, and he
returns to his pal, despondent, in the rain:
“nothing for me,/ nothing for you.” But
his friend—reading Abel’s Island in bed
when he arrives—suggests that friendship
requires little more than “us.” An affec-
tionate tale of friendship. Ages 3–6. (Nov.)Mini Rabbit Is Not Lost
John Bond. Holiday House/Porter, $18.99
(32p) ISBN 978-0-8234-4358-1
Jaunty digital artwork by newcomer
Bond introduces Mini Rabbit and Mother
Rabbit as they set out to make a cake;
they’re compact, stylized black figures
with slender snouts and enormous,
unblinking eyes. As Mother Rabbit dis-
covers that they’re out of berries, Mini
Rabbit’s ears wilt. “I’ll find berries,” the
little rabbit resolves. “Must have cake.”
Off the child dashes, a tiny figure wearing
a red knapsack sprinting across long,
horizontal panels that make note of the
distance covered. Mini Rabbit chants
while running through a meadow (“Cake!
Cake! Cake!”), ears alone visible above
long grass. Landscapes change and adultanimals kindly check in, but nothing
stops Mini Rabbit from rowing across the
sea to a lighthouse, scaling a mountain in
a blizzard, and rappelling from a precipice.
After the young bunny finds a single berry
in a dark cave, a wonderful smell beckons
him homeward. Everybody knows
someone like Mini Rabbit, who forges
ahead with wild optimism, oblivious to
the sinking likelihood of success, and
Bond’s debut wittily explores this attri-
bute alongside the mismatch between
Mini Rabbit’s quotidian desire for pastry
and his momentous, world-spanning trek.
Ages 3–7. (Oct.)★ Almost Time
Gary D. Schmidt and Elizabeth Stickney, illus.
by G. Brian Karas. Clarion, $17.99 (32p)
ISBN 978-0-544-78581-6
Set in maple sugaring country, this tale
by Schmidt (Pay Attention, Carter Jones)
and Stickney (the pen name of Schmidt’s
late wife) examines the difficulty of waiting
for exciting things when they unfold at the
natural world’s pace. Ethan knows what
season it is by the breakfast he’s served:
“When Ethan had to eat his pancakes with
applesauce instead of maple syrup one
Sunday morning, he knew it was almost
sugaring time.” But it’s still several weeks
before the days are warm enough for the
sap to run. Illustrations by Karas (Night
Job) use soft, wintry colors with grainy
textures as Ethan discovers a loose tooth
(“Now Ethan had two things to wait for”).
He spends his days wiggling his tooth,
sledding, and trying “not to think about
maple syrup.” When the tooth comes out
and the sap runs at last (a spread showspails hanging on the family’s trees), Ethan
and his dad share the work of making syrup,
captured in a series of panel illustrations.
Schmidt’s story centers on a single-parent
household, with a father who pays quiet
attention to his son (“How’s that tooth?”),
and shows him that waiting is part of life.
Ages 4–7. (Jan.)Bon Voyage, Mister Rodriguez
Christiane Duchesne, trans. from the French
by Carolyn Perkes, illus. by François Thisdale.
Pajama, $18.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-772-78089-5
This surreal allegory unfolds on the
streets of a seaside town as a group of
children watch an elderly gentleman in an
overcoat and a red scarf emerge “out of a
narrow laneway.” They see him every day,
animals lingering nearby, but on Monday,
something is different. “We held our
breath. Was he waiting for someone?” A
dove lands on Mister Rodriguez’s shoe.
He attaches a thread to her foot, and the
two set off, the man half-floating above
the cobblestones. Every morning that
week, as the diverse children watch, Mister
Rodriguez meets another animal—a gold-
fish, a weary sheepdog, a limping cat (“He
tied a pair of wings to the old kitty’s
back”)—and the pair rise in weightless,
slow-moving flight. Acrylic and digitally
altered artwork by Thisdale (Poetree) offers
crisp, photographic realism, with misty
skies of purple and green that suggest
atmospheric otherworldliness. Though
Montreal author Duchesne seems to be
offering a way to think about the fate of
beings who have died, a lack of clarity
around whether the animals are initially
living may confuse or alarm young
readers. Ages 5–8. (Nov.)Most of the Better Natural
Things in the World
Dave Eggers, illus. by Angel Chang. Chronicle,
$17.99 (52p) ISBN 978-1-4521-6282-9
Mixed-media, digitally rendered land-
scapes in jewelbox colors tell the story of a
silent, solitary journey. The tale opens on
a bleak expanse of land, a wooden chair
inexplicably placed in the foreground, a
magenta cord draped around it: steppe, the
handwritten label reads. A page turn reveals
a white tiger wearing a purple kerchief, the
chair tied to its back, tiptoeing gingerly
across stones in a stream between two sheer
rock walls: gorge, it’s labeled. Where is theChildren’s/YA
continued on p. 68