There's a clean, bold painting of a hump on the left side of the double-page spread... that's Hill. There's a scooped-out valley on the right side... that's Hole.
Hole asks what Hill can see from up where he is: " 'I can see the sun rising,' Hill replied. 'It looks like another beautiful day.' " At night, Hill asks Hole, "What can you feel, so deep in the ground?" Hole can hear the earth breathing. Hole and Hill ask Mole if he can help them swap places, just to experience a different perspective. Mole agrees to dig and dig until Hill is a hole because "Isn't a hole just an inside-out hill, and a hill but an upside-down hole?" (As he digs, he kicks up a wonderful splattering of dirt, captured in kinetic spatters of brown watercolor.) Hill and Hole are happy with their new lives for a while, but both soon start to feel out of their elements. This time it's Wind who helps out, but she can only flatten the landscape, creating "a vast, flat plain stretching all the way to the horizon." And that too was okay, "for a while."
With Hill and Hole Are Best Friends, New Zealand author-illustrator team Kyle Mewburn (Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck!) and Vasanti Unka (The Boring Book; Spots or Stripes?) graphically, cleverly illustrate the idea of swapping points of view. There are no real lessons here, just a general nod to natural curiosity, branching out, change and acceptance. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness