Illustrator’s agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. HarperCollins, Juvenile Fiction - 48 pages. This New York Times Best Illustrated Book is a heartwarming classic from the author of Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, with stunning, evocative art by 1 New York Times bestselling and multiple-award-winning illustrator Christian Robinson (You Matter and Last Stop on Market Street. Robinson concludes with a wide-angle view of growing trees and the children flying a kite, implying a return to carefree fun and putting a poignant distance between the tiny figures and readers. A captivating and utterly unique picture book with interactive, transparent pages about a girl who lives in a haunted house from world-renowned artist Oliver. Brown takes a direct approach to a difficult subject, suggesting how community rituals provide solace. Robinson’s illustrations hint at how the improvised funeral enables the children to acknowledge impermanence, his close-ups capturing their concentration as they assemble the memorial. That was how they knew it was dead.” They solemnly bury the bird under the leafy trees, improvise a mourning song, and surround a stone marker with summer flowers, behaving “the way grown-up people did when someone died.” Even as the children imitate grief in response to the wild bird’s death, they genuinely grieve the joy that has been lost: “You’ll never fly again,” they realize. This heartwarming classic picture book by beloved children’s book author Margaret Wise Brown is beautifully reillustrated for a contemporary audience by the critically acclaimed, award-winning illustrator Christian Robinson.

The sad news arrives on the first page: “The bird was dead when the children found it.” The frowning children gently lift the small brown bird, finding “it was still warm and its eyes were closed. Robinson ( Leo: A Ghost Story) pictures a verdant urban park, where four children-one dressed as a red fox, another wearing blue fairy wings-frolic with a big gray dog. Brown’s 1938 story, best known from a 1958 version illustrated by Remy Charlip, describes a group of children who discover a dead bird.

The dead bird by margaret wise brown