Halfway Wild

A tight-knit family shifts into a variety of human-animal hybrids as they spend a day together. One of the children narrates, explaining that her family is “never the same from one day to the next.” When they “start to buzz and tumble” at daybreak, “we’re a family of bumblebees,” writes debut author Freudig. And when the siblings and their grandmother splash around in a puddle, “we’re a family of ducks,” all three gaining webbed feet and long, feathery wings. Barry’s (Schnitzel) caricatured aesthetic fits the unusual goings-on, even if the results aren’t always appealing in a traditional sense (during the family’s antlike walk to the beach, Dad uses his bulging insect abdomen to balance a beach ball, umbrella, and other supplies). Additionally, the logic to the transformations can be fuzzy: while it makes sense that the family would become seals while playing in the sea or skunks when baths are overdue, it’s less clear what gulping down water after a spicy meal has to do with foxes or why getting paint-spattered during an art project would invoke (mostly black-and-white) puffins. Ages 3–7. (Sept.)