, $16.99, 9780061142888/0061142883, 48 pp., ages 3-6, February 2010)
Here's a love story that everyone from elementary school students to adults can enjoy. Peter McCarty (Hondo and Fabian) employs his characteristic wit and understatement in a story of affection that blooms on the playground between Henry, a cat, and Chloe, a bunny. "Henry awoke to the smell of blueberry muffins." He sleeps in a bed in a simple yet tasteful room; a poster of a bunny in a baseball uniform and a goldfish in an aquarium tip us off that Henry is not a typical cat. In the kitchen, Henry's mother informs him that the blueberry muffins she baked are for school. McCarty uses colored inks and watercolors in neutral tones to give the feline family dimension and applies color sparingly. The trio of blueberry muffins--blue down to their wrappers--positively glows on the page. On the way to school, his blueberry muffin safely stowed in his backpack, Henry catches a pass from a high school football player. The older kid praises Henry: "You're pretty fast. I have a sister your age--she's fast too."
Henry knows just who the older boy means. Henry "thought she was the loveliest girl in his class," reads the narrative beneath a line-up of schoolmates that includes chicks, bunnies, puppies and squirrels. They seem to float on a cushion of air. McCarty uses white space to accentuate the feeling of contented isolation that stems from the hero's preoccupation. Henry utters not a word, but his button-eye expression says everything. "Are you looking at me?" asks Chloe, a bunny with almond-shaped eyes and a pink dress. Watercolor poppies and purple five-petaled flowers drawn in ink seem to migrate like butterflies across the page in her direction. This is love. "You're not going to talk to a girl, are you?" says Henry's pal Sancho at recess. Ah, male peer pressure. Instead of approaching Chloe, Henry does "his best forward roll," while Chloe turns "a perfect cartwheel." Henry chases Chloe in a game of tag down the page in a zigzag line of inked green grass. McCarty gets the dynamics exactly right: the unspoken cues, the teasing and the token of affection (hint: it's blue) once Henry's sure the feeling is mutual. A year-round Valentine with just the right touch of humor.--Jennifer M. Brown