Wenxuan Cao

Love this one, which I believe was originally published in Chinese and then later translated into English.

The story is pretty simple: it's a hot, hot day in summer and there's only one skinny tree with any shade, but there are a lot of hot animals who want that shade! They fight until they realize there's no point--that tree really doesn't give much shade at all. But then a man walks by holding a child's hand--and the animals notice that his shadow completely protects the child from the sun. One by one, the animals line up so that each one can offer a smaller animal some shade, even the elephant who gets no shade for himself...until a cloud finally comes by.

In addition to the pretty illustrations, the book has some excellent design choices that make the book even more fun: each animal's text is a different color, the fonts are different sizes depending on how big or small, near or far an animal is, and the middle pages in which the animals line up start thin--about three inches wide--and get wider as each larger animal gets in line until we're back to the width of a full page.

A lovely book with gentle lessons about kindness to others.… (meer)