Books like Red and Lulu
By Matt Tavares
For families who tear up at the sight of a lit-up tree in a city square, this is the story behind the magic — told through two birds who refuse to lose each other. Tender, hopeful, and glowing with holiday wonder.
A great-grandson wanders through his grandfather's topiary garden, where hedges shaped like a farmboy, a soldier, and a chickenpox-covered kid retell a whole lifetime one memory at a time.
A witch famous throughout Russia for eating children is secretly a lonely old woman who longs for a grandchild, so she disguises herself as a village babushka to find one.
A fox and his dog share an inseparable life together until the dog dies, sending the fox into grief so deep he tears apart the garden they once tended, until an unexpected pumpkin vine slowly draws him back into the world.
A parent shares a string of tender wishes for a child — to find wonder in flying birds, to know love as vast and constant as the moon loves the sky.
A rhyming picture book that considers love in all its moods — sentimental, silly, soulful — through a parade of animal characters and playful verse rather than a single storyline.
A book-loving man's whole life is scattered by a tornado, leaving him stranded in a gray, joyless place — until a single colorful book leads him to a library that needs him as much as he needs it.
When an evil spider queen threatens to destroy a kindly old woman's garden, the good bugs call on the tiny warrior Leaf Men for help — and race to recover a Long Lost Toy that might save her.
A duckling too odd-looking for his own barnyard is mocked and driven off, then must survive hunters and harsh seasons alone before discovering what he truly is.
A millionaire dog-poet arrives in Paris and is swept up by dazzling characters like Fritz from the Ritz and Pierre Potpurri, but something — namely love — still eludes him.
A tree loves a boy so completely that she gives him her apples, her branches, and finally her trunk, asking nothing in return as he grows old.
A curious girl full of wonder loses the special someone who shared her sense of magic, so she locks her heart in a bottle around her neck to keep from feeling the loss.
