Amy Hest is a quiet giant of picture book writing whose name you may not know.
The noisy giants, those with name recognition, tend to be author-illustrators: Sendak, Seuss, Steig, Carle, and more recently Blackall, Lin, Klassen, Morales. Less likely to be on your radar are authors who don’t illustrate, people whose books look different from one another because they’re illustrated by different artists.
Over the course of 38 picture books, plus many chapter books and middle grade novels, Hest has paid the utmost attention to the emotional lives of her young characters.
Her gentle sense of humor doesn’t always land her books on best-seller lists or the shelves of the biggest booksellers. But if you want to console your kids after a rotten day? Wind them down before a nap? Reassure them at bedtime? Hest is your writer.
What Hest offers is a feeling of connection and recognition. She will help you tell your kids that how they feel is valid, and that they are beloved.
BUNNY SHOULD BE SLEEPING (Neal Porter/Holiday House, 40 pp., $18.99, ages 4 to 8), illustrated with the softest, fluffiest, bedtimiest digital artwork by Renata Liwska, gives us a bitty bunny who should be sleeping but is waiting for his (seemingly single) dad to come check on him.
Unable to wait any longer (sometimes a bunny “just needs his dad!”), he climbs out of his crib, packs his little red wagon with a water bottle, a blanket, a cookie and a favorite book — “things for Dad on a cold winter night” — and ventures down the hall.
It takes a bit of doing to rouse Dad. In the meantime, Bunny drinks the water, plays with the blanket and eats the cookie.
When Dad finally wakes up and gives the needed hug, he thoughtfully reframes it: “Sometimes a dad just needs his little bunny.” Soon they’ve fallen asleep together in the crib.
It’s an ideal book for an evening wind-down or a midnight consolation, the kind of story parents reach for again and again to soothe a savage bunny.
Slightly less winning but still a treat is WHEN ROSIE WALKS GEORGE (Two Lions, 40 pp., $17.99, ages 3 to 7), illustrated by Taeeun Yoo, a two-time New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books Award winner, here working digitally in a less stylized vein than usual.
“George is old and deaf in one ear, and he doesn’t run fast anymore,” we learn at the start. But all dogs need walks. He’s a beagle-y sort of pup and his sweet, somewhat generic multiracial family brings him to the beach regularly.
Rosie, the youngest, is George’s priority. Together, they soak up the sun and salty air while the rest of the family moves more quickly. He keeps an eye on her.
When Rosie’s red ball rolls out to sea, George waits, heroically, “all through the dark summer night until morning,” when the tide brings it back.
Finding lost items is important to kids. So is the feeling that someone is looking out for them. Dogs are important to them, too.
Hest’s text is tender and supportive. Your ball matters. You matter. You matter to your dog, just as he matters to you.
BIG BEAR AND LITTLE BEAR GO FISHING (Neal Porter/Holiday House, 40 pp., $18.99, ages 4 to 8) showcases Hest’s signature use of repetition, beginning on its very first page: “One day Big Bear says to Little Bear, I’m just in the mood for fishing. Me too, says Little Bear. Just in the mood.”
So rhythmic. So lulling.
A less confident writer would switch things up, and the result would be far less joyful.
Then four successive pages, chronicling the pair’s growing list of things “fishermen need” for such an excursion (raincoats, poles, blueberry scones, a book of stories), all end with the refrain “Now they are ready for fishing,” followed by “Almost” at the top of the next page.
But guess what? They go fishing.
In sunny, old-fashioned pencil-and-watercolor pictures by the Caldecott medalist Erin Stead, two yellow-jacketed bears, pulling a red wagon (just like Bunny!), head to the lake.
There is a lovely, touching moment when Little Bear hesitates, then takes a risk and steps into the wobbly, creaky boat — into the arms of Big Bear.
And then guess what? After watching and waiting and eating and storytelling, they see a fish.
Instead of trying to catch it, however, they look at it, “and Fish looks back.”
Little Bear is sad when Fish is gone, but together Big Bear and Little Bear “watch the light on the lake. They think about Fish.” Then they go home and cuddle up in their hammock, as they’re just in the mood for a nap.
What permeates these stories — each imbued with a subtly different texture and ambience by its uniquely skilled illustrator — is the deep love of true companionship; the sensitive navigation of disappointment, loss and fear; and the brilliant rhythms of a picture book giant at the top of her game. All three will bring comfort and joy to any family lucky enough to read them.
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