The twin desires to mourn and to comfort imbue a simple fable played out by a woodland cast.Though Fox is eager for rest after a long night of hunting, his curiosity is piqued when he hears the birds singing a strange new song. He follows them to a dead bird in a field. Fox's confusion attracts the attention of Moth, who finds it difficult to explain what has happened to the bird. Instead, Moth tells Fox how the moon reflects the sun's rays, even long after the sun has gone. Fox struggles to understand until Moth explains that the bird is dead. "I was trying to be kind," Moth tells Fox. "Sad things are hard to hear. They are pretty hard to say, too. They should be told in little pieces." As Fox grapples with the newfound realization, Moth offers solace if not the explanation he was seeking. Mountford does dual duty in giving voice to both the confusion that comes with death and a template on how to be there for those in pain. Tonally, the book never turns precious, the storytelling clear, concise, and sympathetic. All this is wonderfully accompanied by digital art resembling woodcuts and lithographs, the black of the fox, the birds, and the moth contrasting keenly with the colors of the natural world surrounding them. (This book was reviewed digitally.)Speaking to heart and eye in equal measures, a beautiful treatise on remembering life and helping those left behind. (Picture book. 4-7)

The twin desires to mourn and to comfort imbue a simple fable played out by a woodland cast.Though Fox is eager for rest after a long night of hunting, his curiosity is piqued when he hears the birds singing a strange new song. He follows them to a dead bird in a field. Fox's confusion attracts the attention of Moth, who finds it difficult to explain what has happened to the bird. Instead, Moth tells Fox how the moon reflects the sun's rays, even long after the sun has gone. Fox struggles to understand until Moth explains that the bird is dead. "I was trying to be kind," Moth tells Fox. "Sad things are hard to hear. They are pretty hard to say, too. They should be told in little pieces." As Fox grapples with the newfound realization, Moth offers solace if not the explanation he was seeking. Mountford does dual duty in giving voice to both the confusion that comes with death and a template on how to be there for those in pain. Tonally, the book never turns precious, the storytelling clear, concise, and sympathetic. All this is wonderfully accompanied by digital art resembling woodcuts and lithographs, the black of the fox, the birds, and the moth contrasting keenly with the colors of the natural world surrounding them. (This book was reviewed digitally.)Speaking to heart and eye in equal measures, a beautiful treatise on remembering life and helping those left behind. (Picture book. 4-7)

Drawn out of his den by strange birdsong, Fox finds a group of crows gathered around a lone bird lying on the ground. In crisp digital spreads, Mountford (The Moonlight Zoo) renders the black bird’s claws drawn up awkwardly, its eyes staring at nothing. Not yet understanding death, Fox doesn’t know what’s wrong; he lacks precise vocabulary for the sun and the moon, too, calling them simply “circles in the sky.” A moth who knows more about the natural world’s cycles tries to explain death using the nightly disappearance of the sun as a metaphor. “Are you saying Bird will be back tomorrow?!” Fox asks, with hope. Moth backpedals. “JUST TELL ME THE TRUTH,” Fox shouts, in a moment of raw emotionality. “Bird is dead,” Moth admits. Suddenly, things become clear: “Fox didn’t know that word well, but he felt it.” In a deeply affecting sequence, the two mourn together. Stylized visual elements—geometric borders that work as hills, circles for heavenly bodies, and seemingly buried skeletons whose faint presence appears alongside the living creatures’ own—offer layers of reality echoed by intuitively pitched lines that capture youth’s first encounter with death’s finality, and with the experience of saying goodbye. Ages 3–7. (Sept.)