Once upon a cloud

The environment, the world of Totoro, and a chicken keeper losing her memory feature in new picture books.

- ANN PACKER

LOST, by Mariajo Ilustrajo (Frances Lincoln, $27.99)

Getting the message of climate change across to picture book readers is a special gift. The 2020 winner of the World Illustration Awards, who demonstrated the inexorable rise of sea levels in Flooded, delivers another environmental message in Lost. Our homesick hero first appears as a tentative foot, one among many on a subway platform. Everyone is far too busy and distracted to take notice of this wintry white stranger - until a kind redhead (keen eyes will have spotted her earlier) invites Bear home to her place. The food is strange and hot (echoes of Goldilocks) and the bathtub sea very small, but a handy picture book about the North Pole suggests a solution for the misplaced mammal. A tad anthropomorphic, but the tragic reality of survivors stranded, each on their tiny patch of ice, is there for the observant reader/teacher.

LIZZY AND THE CLOUD, by The Fan Brothers (Frances Lincoln, $27.99)