Books like A Splendid Friend, Indeed
By Suzanne Bloom
For the kid who has a friend who never stops talking (or is that friend themselves), this shows how opposites can still be a real team. Gentle, quiet, and warmly funny, with plenty of white space to breathe.
A toy bear waits on a department store shelf night after night, hoping someone will love him despite his missing button — until a little girl named Lisa decides he's exactly the bear she wants.
When James gets a cocker spaniel puppy named Barkis, family peace is tested because Barkis and Nell Jean's tabby kitten simply won't get along.
A zookeeper spends every day visiting his animal friends — racing the tortoise, sitting with the shy penguin, reading to the owl — until he wakes up too sick to come, and they decide to visit him instead.
After an owl attack knocks a baby fruit bat from her mother's grasp, she lands in a bird's nest and is raised alongside three baby birds, learning to live by their rules — until she finds her way back to her own kind.
A boy named Dennis expresses everything through mime — silent, expressive, entirely his own way — until loneliness gives way to friendship when he meets a girl named Joy.
A big, scary-looking fish longs for friends in the wide blue sea, but the little fish keep swimming away — until a fisherman's net traps them all and Big Al gets his chance to help.
A gallery of animal families — ducks, pandas, hippos, tigers, and more — appears in framed portraits, each one showing a different way to be a family, from two moms to a kid with just a pet plant.
A picnic goes sideways when rain and stormy winds send an umbrella (and Mouse!) flying into a tree — one friend calls it good news, the other bad, all the way through.
A fish and his best friend, a tadpole, grow up together in a pond until the tadpole becomes a frog and hops off to explore dry land, leaving the fish desperate to follow.
A lonely boy and a bluebird form an unlikely friendship, told entirely without words — until the bird risks everything to save him from harm.
A wolf who has always lived alone atop a hill grows uneasy when a little wolf quietly settles beside him and won't leave — and slowly, warily, learns to let him stay.
