BRUDDERS LEARNS THE JOY OF SAYING THANK YOU

This warmly illustrated picture-book series installment sets out to teach children the importance of manners and gratitude.

In Leigh’s follow-up to Brudders Learns How to Make Friends (2020), Brudders, a bear, awakens to find that his bunny friends are harvesting their most recent crop of carrots. They invite him to try one of them and allow him to take home as many as he likes, but as he leaves the fields, he knows that’s he’s forgetting something. With the help of his friend, a bird named Zeke, he learns what must be done and sets off to correct his mistake. The story is a simple morality tale that teaches the importance of saying thanks—a lesson most appropriate for children just starting preschool. It’s told in uneven verse that doesn’t always roll off the tongue, but it does occasionally provide readers with words whose stylizations clarify their meanings and tones (stretttttched) and also make it fun to read. Roberts’ warm, earth-toned ink-and-watercolor illustrations sometimes outshine the text. They vary in perspective, with a portrayal of a view through Brudders’ binoculars that’s clever in its use of negative space. Overall, the book offers little that’s new, but it comfortably joins the ranks of such works as Greg Foley’s Thank You Bear (2007) and Anna Dewdney’s Llama Llama Gives Thanks (2017).

A familiar but often enjoyable picture book.