A lost grizzly bear gets adopted by an array of new animal friends in this picture book.

Deep in a blue-green and magenta wooded landscape, Grizzly has gotten lost and can’t find home. Exhausted, he sleeps and then awakes to discover plucky yellow-and-pink Bird. Bird expresses concern for his situation and helps Grizzly locate an “abandoned honeycomb” dripping with oodles of golden goo. Having fed him, Bird offers platitudes: “Even when things don’t go our way, if we have gratitude, we can be happy.” Understandably, Grizzly is frustrated by this advice: “I have absolutely lost everything!” Readers may be inclined to agree, but Bird introduces Grizzly to a menagerie of birds, a wolf, squirrels, and a badger and tells the story of her own lonely arrival in the woods and how a found family cared for her. Although his pals can’t help him find his home, Grizzly learns to accept that they are his new family. When some grizzlies show up to catch fish, he makes an unexpected choice. While character interactions deftly model compassion, care, and active listening, Mathew skirts emotional realism—it takes Grizzly a shockingly short time to adapt to the sadness of his loss, and there are no further episodes of nostalgia or longing for what is gone. Barron’s bright, animation-inspired, jewel-tone, lineless digital art, packed with simplified cartoon shapes and dynamic composition, enlivens this enjoyable friendship narrative.

An engaging animal tale that may help readers envision possible happy futures after a loss.

In Mathew’s picture book, a diffident young cello finds his voice at a school for musical instruments.

Bello, a rabbit-toothed, freckled, anthropomorphized cello, is excited to be starting school. His teacher, Ms. Melody, is a large purple treble clef whose very presence makes colorful patterns swirl across the walls. Bello’s new classmates are keen to express themselves; they include Finnegan the Flute, whose whistles emerge as chirping birds, and Guillermo the guitar, whose strumming generates rainbows. Bello is worried that his own sound won’t fit in with the others’ boisterous efforts. (“He didn’t know what kind of song he would sing.”) But when nap time comes, and the other young instruments are finding it difficult to sleep, Bello’s soothing song proves to be just the thing to send them off. Mathew’s straightforward, non-rhyming narration is presented in a large, faux-handwritten font positioned on the blank spaces within the illustrations or in shadowed, transparent bubbles across the more riotous collages. The moral is simple but sweet, and the conceit of substituting color for sound makes for a diverting portrayal of classroom noise and energy. Kickingbird and Stier’s digital illustrations foreground the protagonists while lighting up each backdrop with soft-focus blurs of color and kindness. The fact that the other instruments’ vivacity is impressionistic rather than overwhelming ensures that Bello, while different, is never excluded. Most young readers should find an instrument here with which to identify.

A cute and colorful celebration of individuality.