The Picnic and Other Stories

April 10, 2023
In this uneven chapter book, Jarvis (The Boy with Flowers in His Hair) creates two sweet-looking creatures—a brown bear with a round nose, and a small, blue bird with a feathery cowlick—and tells four stories about their difficult friendship. In the first, Bird tumbles into a big red blossom, and her voice, calling for help, leads Bear to believe that he has met a talking flower—to which he tells “silly” stories about his friend. In “The Picnic,” Bear fails to pack the things he promised to take, but his finesse (“We could eat the picnic that I have most definitely packed. But...”), coupled with Bird’s unwillingness to call him out, sidesteps conflict. In “The Painting,” Bird’s discovery that Bear paints more realistically than she does results in an art-related mistruth. And in “The Blanket,” Bear is so delighted with his fuzzy throw (“Oh, what a blanket you are... I’m going to call you Suzie”) that Bird concludes she’s been abandoned. While the duo’s charming exchanges will elicit giggles, Bird seems always to get the short end of the stick, and each vignette’s comedy is based on misunderstandings that never feel fully resolved. Ages 5–9.