SOMETIMES IT'S NICE TO BE ALONE

Being alone can be fun—but so can spending time with a pal.

The book opens with the titular phrase as a tan-skinned child with enormous, dark-rimmed glasses sits at a table, a stuffed elephant at their feet. “Just you, eating your cookie, alone. But what if a friend pops in?” Suddenly, the elephant—now huge and rendered with astonishingly realistic detail—joins the child’s snack time. Readers will laugh out loud as the text continues to calmly acknowledge how nice it is when a friend comes along to share cookies. The other adventures in the book also start with the titular phrase and a different, initially inconspicuous toy animal that comes to vivid life. Reading a book with a horse, somersaulting with a whale, trampling autumn leaves with a dinosaur—the list goes on, as does the synergy of words, art, and layout. The text is simple and eloquent, with enough repetition to captivate the youngest readers but also with precise, often lyrical, descriptions for each activity. The child’s imagination is sometimes evident even before the animals come to life; in one scene, where text describes the child biking up a hill, “pushing and panting,” the illustration depicts them riding up a slightly angled board propped against a barrel. The fantastical adventures wind down at bedtime—but is that a penguin under the bed? (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A sparkling reminder that nothing is as powerful as a child’s imagination.