David Soman (Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy)
ISBN: 9780803739932
Nautical and expressive bear cubs in soft-wash environments, navigating tricky emotions.
Our bear protagonists are siblings, and so you know from the start that there are certain kinds of trouble that it takes good friends or blood-relatives to get into. After an accident, the trio heads out to repair the damage (and to prevent them from having to fess up). The sailing isn't always smooth, and the relationship is strained by blame for the accident, but shared peril and misery are always great to put things in perspective. Our intrepid wanderers come back, somewhat the worse for wear, and find what they were looking for was always right at home (which, in picture book land, is about as good of a moral as you can get). Special props for the anxious and clingy mother bear at the end, who adults will realize has been much more exercised over the missing cubs than over the broken trinket.
Unsurprisingly from the deft creator of Ladybug Girl, these siblings have good hearts and good intentions, but we see in this story that emotions and circumstances can bring out the worst in even the best of us. Showing how they rely on each other, forgive each other, and take responsibility (shared) for the inciting problem is a great visual (and so very visual - check out those postures and faces and emotional colorings) to give to little kids who are still figuring out all this complicated emotional and relationship stuff, with brains that aren't even done growing yet. Sometimes I think that picture books like these that show empathy and emotional connections might even do a lot of grown-ups good.
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