In Lee’s illustrated chapter book, a family of crocodiles travels from Africa to England to expand their horizons.

The author returns to the world of anthropomorphic animals, this time in a transcontinental adventure that explores what it means to be human—even for members of other species. The story opens in an unnamed African village on the banks of the Sillibilli River, where a family of crocodiles, led by the very large Mr. Crocodile, sits down to an elegant high tea with human village leaders and an astonished “Great White Hunter.” A flashback explains how Kita, a villager, persuaded Mr. Crocodile, formerly known as Sandbank, that he was “a Person” and therefore it’s inappropriate for him to pull other people into the river, even for fun. The high-tea tradition grows out of Mr. Crocodile’s new understanding of his personhood, and when he learns that the hunter, Henry Henderson, has been targeting crocodiles elsewhere, he insists on inviting him to tea to establish their common personhood. Mr. Crocodile informs the astonished hunter that, because he’s had dreams of a friendly English boy named Thomas, he and a group of crocodiles plan to travel to England. Mr. Crocodile and his companions soon arrive in London’s Crouch End area, where they meet Thomas and quickly charm his neighbors. However, it becomes clear that Henderson plans to abuse and exploit the crocodiles during their stay. Mr. Crocodile’s resentment grows, but when he runs into a gnu, he interrogates his own assumptions about who counts as a person. He has an epiphany, and soon organizes a multispecies event to demonstrate the concept of equality.

Lee presents a story that’s highly readable and often charming, and its didacticism doesn’t overwhelm the story. The text’s frequent, idiosyncratic use of capital letters (“I will give you as fine an English High Tea as I can manage which we will enjoy together as fellow Persons,” says Mr. Crocodile at one point) adds a flavor of antiquity to the prose, which also effectively contributes to its arch tone. It’s also enhanced by the fact that the book is not at all subtle in its messaging, as when Mr. Crocodile criticizes an atlas that refers to a river as “crocodile infested” and asks Thomas if it would be fair to call Crouch End “INFESTED BY HUMAN PERSONS,” which the boy agrees is indeed inappropriate. However, the book’s subtitle, which refers to the story as a fable, adequately prepares readers for its message-driven approach. Mr. Crocodile’s big reveal will remind readers that it was the African villagers, not Henderson, who taught him about personhood. That said, the book does not fully grapple with Europe’s relationship with Africa. Also, Mr. Crocodile’s enthusiasm for tea and wearing top hats—as depicted in Hunkeler’s realistic, painterly full-color illustrations, which depict major events throughout—may remind readers of Jean de Brunhoff’s stories of Babar the Elephant and their colonialist overtones. Still, it’s a cohesive story that generally overcomes such flaws.

A message-driven animal tale that successfully engages readers while also instructing them.

A young boy meets a mysterious painter with wondrous abilities in Lee’s novel.

Brian Jones is the son of the wealthiest man in the small village of Sandstone-by-the-Sea. His father, Moab, and mother, Melissa, and his 12 other siblings fill the house of “Goodly Home on the edge of the Sea Cliffs.” Brian becomes ill with a mysterious disease that the local doctor can’t cure. On the fourth floor of the Goodly Home, Brian’s life drains of all excitement. Desperate to cure his son, Moab seeks out an artist to fill Brian’s white room “with all the things [he] like[s] just as they are” so that he may begin to get better. When Moab finds Mervyn—an angry, muttering artist with an unusual talent for painting things realistically—he hires him to paint the walls of his son’s tower. Mervyn works for a week and produces such a lifelike display of the outside world that Brian’s family is in awe. Before long, people in the village of Sandstone-by-the-Sea become desperate for a piece of Mervyn’s magic, and when the villagers begin to turn against him, he does something quite unexpected. Lee’s marvelous imagination engagingly contrasts a portrayal of a rich family with the villagers’ simple desire for access to the same magic that the family receives. Despite the lack of variety in sentence length, Lee’s prose effectively propels the narrative to an explosive climax in which he subtly notes how unusual it is for people to chase something outside of the social norm. So’s illustrations are both vibrant and abstract, and they assist in painting a detailed portrait of both the village and the characters. Together, So and Lee create a topsy-turvy story of a genius ahead of his time.

A wonderfully imaginative, playful, and layered tale.

Based on the myth of Orpheus, Lee’s fantasy novel follows a boy’s quest with his father to retrieve his mother from the afterlife.

Ten-year-old Sam lives with his father, John, in an unquestioned, unvarying routine; “They simply thought of this gray existence as life.” When a blank book is mailed to them, however, Sam discovers that whatever he draws and writes in it becomes real, like when he sketches a lavish tent inhabited by a singing, dancing, wise elephant in Edwardian dress whom he names Lepanto. Playing cards with Lepanto, Sam sees a vision of his mother, who’s whispering, “Come and get me,” although—as he finally learns from John—she died years ago. Encouraged by Lepanto to trust his no-longer-blank book and his imagination, Sam determines to bring his mother back from the Dread City, telling his disbelieving father, “I’m shaping events. And I say we go.” Although Sam and John can count on help from the book and Lepanto, their long journey through the Far Land of Fear is beset with dangers, like agents of the Dread City who want to drag them into despair. Can they succeed where Orpheus failed? In his debut children’s book, poet and playwright Lee writes a wildly imaginative, entertaining adventure story with deep foundations both in the lush realm of mythos and poignant human emotions. Beyond that, Lee dares to give Sam’s quest an ending that takes seriously the elephant’s insistence on the reality of imagination, making the story even more powerful. In her debut book, artist LeBow provides woodcutlike illustrations with rich blacks, curving white lines, and a remarkable, charged sense of mythic power that marries well with the novel.

An extraordinarily beautiful, touching adventure that can stand with the classics of children’s literature.

Lee’s latest poetry collection explores the strained relationship between humankind and the natural world.

The author’s strongest poems discuss humans’ destruction of nature in general, and the animal kingdom in particular. In “Geese,” for instance, the speaker tells of “acid rain that burns the feather, / and stinging air from great cities / that makes them fly blind,” and then asks, “Are they so dumb or so forgetful / they come and come again each year / never changing their way?” In “Dandelion,” the speaker suggests that the titular weed is “more beautiful than the storied rose” because of its resilience and ability to survive the winter. The speaker begins to value other forms of life as much as his own, concluding, “I wish you stood here, and I / flowered there.” “The World is Dying” states it plainly: “We recoil / at nature’s tooth and claw, / yet no animal kills and kills / and kills even without knowing / he kills like we kill.” In “A New Season,” Lee grapples with the consequences of such unprecedented killing in climate change, noting that we all will become “strangers on our own ground.” Near the end of the collection, “The Oranges of Guimaraes” suggests that perhaps humans are not as special and central to the ecosystem as we once believed. With hundreds of poems to shuffle through, in ekphrastic and naturalistic styles, readers are bound to find several that resonate, and at least one or two that truly linger. Overall, Lee manages to make this collection of old and new poems feel urgent and up-to-the-minute as it rushes toward a vital point. It’s an interdisciplinary set of works that effectively considers the havoc that people have wreaked on living things—including themselves.

An unsettling and necessary read for environmentalists and fans of naturalist poetry.

Based on the myth of Orpheus, Lee’s fantasy novel follows a boy’s quest with his father to retrieve his mother from the afterlife.

Ten-year-old Sam lives with his father, John, in an unquestioned, unvarying routine; “They simply thought of this gray existence as life.” When a blank book is mailed to them, however, Sam discovers that whatever he draws and writes in it becomes real, like when he sketches a lavish tent inhabited by a singing, dancing, wise elephant in Edwardian dress whom he names Lepanto. Playing cards with Lepanto, Sam sees a vision of his mother, who’s whispering, “Come and get me,” although—as he finally learns from John—she died years ago. Encouraged by Lepanto to trust his no-longer-blank book and his imagination, Sam determines to bring his mother back from the Dread City, telling his disbelieving father, “I’m shaping events. And I say we go.” Although Sam and John can count on help from the book and Lepanto, their long journey through the Far Land of Fear is beset with dangers, like agents of the Dread City who want to drag them into despair. Can they succeed where Orpheus failed? In his debut children’s book, poet and playwright Lee writes a wildly imaginative, entertaining adventure story with deep foundations both in the lush realm of mythos and poignant human emotions. Beyond that, Lee dares to give Sam’s quest an ending that takes seriously the elephant’s insistence on the reality of imagination, making the story even more powerful. In her debut book, artist LeBow provides woodcutlike illustrations with rich blacks, curving white lines, and a remarkable, charged sense of mythic power that marries well with the novel.

An extraordinarily beautiful, touching adventure that can stand with the classics of children’s literature.