WHEN YOU MEET A BEAR ON BROADWAY
by Amy Hest & illustrated by Elivia Savadier
A little girl kindly helps a lost bear cub she meets on Broadway as they set off together to find his mother. When his plaintive call finally leads his mother to him, the girl waves goodbye and runs home to tell her own mama all about her adventure. Hest’s sweet, very slight tale has an air of innocence about it as the little girl instructs readers on the proper, polite way to behave in this situation. This is a New York in which a child can go confidently about her neighborhood on her own, knowing that she will safely return home to her own mother. Savadier’s delicate black-line drawings capture, with just-right accuracy, a busy Upper West Side neighborhood filled with shops and people and apartment buildings. The girl and the bears are brightly defined while the settings are rendered in soft, autumn colors. The endpapers expand the Broadway scenes as they provide a preview of the tale at the beginning and a bit of an epilogue at the end. Gentle and winning. (Picture book. 3-7)