In Briant's (Seven Stories
) incongruously titled wordless tale, a nature-loving boy visits a city park to look for animals. When he jumps into a pile of leaves, he discovers an enormous, friendly creature made entirely of leaves, who takes the wide-eyed child to see a menagerie of woodland animals, as well as a crew felling trees for a new construction project. The story then fast forwards a few decades to a future filled with flying cars. The now adult boy's son finds a leaf that his father had long ago pressed inside a book, inspiring a trip to the same park, which is now a commercial strip. Returning home, he tells his father what he saw (via images in speech balloons), triggering a distant memory of the leaf creature. Father and son travel to a patch of forest where they camp out overnight and encounter wildlife—including the elusive leaf creature. Readers should have no trouble interpreting Briant's cheerful cartoons, which move the action along briskly in panels of varying sizes, but the amorphous message about getting back to nature is less clear. Ages 3–6. (Sept.)
