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BIG OR LITTLE?

By Kathy Stinson, illustrated by Toni Goffe, Annick, 32 pages, $19.95, ages 2 to 4

Big and little. It's one of the most important polarities in the life of the very little, and a concept that this newly reissued classic explores with perfect aplomb, admirably assisted by Toni Goffe, whose gentle, charming watercolours provide all the necessary visuals.

“Sometimes I feel big,” says the small, spiky-haired boy at the centre of this tale. He feels big when he can reach the seventh-floor button in the elevator, or pour milk from a large jug into his cereal.

On the flip side, though, he feels small when he (inevitably, it seems) spills that milk. “Or if I wake up and my bed's wet.” He feels big when he shaves with his dad, or helps his mom wash her car. But he still has to sit in his car seat in the car, which makes him feel very small, as does getting lost between the cookies and the cereal at the supermarket. And so it goes, big or little, big and little. A parting shot of our hero shows him tucked up in bed with his teddy and the family cat: “Mostly,” he says, “I want to be big. But sometimes I like being little, too.”

BOO HOO BIRD

By Jeremy Tankard, Scholastic, 32 pages, $16.99, ages 2 to 5

When Bird gets “bonked” on the head while playing catch with Raccoon, his first reaction is, “Ouch. That hurt. A lot.”

Then he starts to cry. And nothing can stop the crying. In fact, it escalates with each intervention from a flotilla of friends. Raccoon says he's sorry and tries to kiss the bonk better; when that doesn't work, he enlists the help of Rabbit, whose hug doesn't seem to assuage the hurt either.

Beaver offers a cookie, Sheep suggests a game of hide-and-seek (“‘You want me to hide?' wailed Bird. ‘I CAN HARDLY WALK!!!'” Even clever Fox's remedy of a Band-Aid, which always makes Fox's “boo-boos” feel better, is met with a “Boo hoo hoo!” from Bird.

Bird only decides that his bonk doesn't hurt any more when his friends dissolve into a chorus of sympathetic wails. Then it's Bird who has to do the cheering up. The ephemeral arc of childhood woe is captured beautifully, in deft text and brightly coloured illustrations in an appealing and effective mix of styles: graphic, black-outlined animals at play in not-quite-realistic wildflower meadows.

POUNCE DE LEON

By Tim Wynne-Jones, illustrated by Alfredo Tapia, Red Deer Press, 32 pages, $19.95, ages 6 to 12

“Pounce found Mrs. Florida Brown on a bad, bad night on the rainy side of town. He decided he had better take her home.” A purposeful feline is Pounce, a cat that knows when and where he's needed. But is was hard work looking after Mrs. B. “If her knuckles ached, he'd let her pat him for a good long time ... and if she was lonely at night, he'd let her curl up right there beside him. He kept her entertained. Otherwise she just moped.”

One day, Pounce notices a photograph hanging over the mantlepiece. It was of a beautiful, smiling girl sitting at the edge of a “sparkling” pond. There was a stone fountain in the form of a smiling child in the pond. “‘Look at her, will you,' said Mrs. B. ... ‘The fountain of youth. ... My, my, but I could use some of that.'”

Pounce had never seen a fountain of youth in Mrs. B.'s dark, sepulchral house – a wonderfully atmospheric gloom has been conjured up in oils by Alfredo Tapia – but that doesn't mean that he won't try to find it. From an attic window, he spies a tangled garden that seems to contain a pool enshrouded with vines. Pounce lures Mrs. B. into the garden and, via a watery accident from which Mrs. B. rescues him, the “fountain of youth” observed from the attic window is revealed: a revivifying, restorative moment for all, and a likely cure for Mrs. B.'s recurring sadness.

Kudos to Tim Wynne-Jones for a perfectly plotted picture book that also plays with the Ponce de Leon myth in a most enjoyable way.

BLUEBERRY GIRL

By Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Charles Vess, HarperCollins, 32 pages, $19.50, all ages

From Neil Gaiman, writer of comics, prolific author of fantasy and science fiction, winner of the 2009 Newbery Award for his novel The Graveyard Book , comes yet another example of the sweep of his talent. His newest offering is what might be described as a secular prayer for an unborn baby, the Blueberry Girl of the title.

If Charles Vess's illustrations of fairies and less benign denizens of the spirit world sweep and swirl in a vaguely 19th-century, Rackham-like way across the pages, Gaiman's poem display nothing if not a 21st-century sensibility about what a good life for a modern girl might be.

The lilting cadence of his verse almost belies the rigour of his “prescription.” The poem is addressed to a trio of women: Shakespeare's witches? The benign and malign from the pages of the Brothers Grimm? We can't tell, but the poem begins with the lines:

Ladies of light and ladies of darkness and ladies of never-you- mind,

this is a prayer for a blueberry girl.

First, may you ladies be kind.

Keep her from spindles and sleeps at sixteen,

Let her stay waking and wise.

Nightmares at three or bad husbands at thirty,

these will not trouble her eyes.

Dull days at forty, false friends at fifteen –

let her have brave days and truth,

Let her go places

that we have never been,

trust and delight in her youth.

There's more, and it's all more than good.

BLUE MOUNTAIN TROUBLE

By Martin Mordecai, Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic, 341 pages, $21.99, ages 10 to 14

Martin Mordecai, now a resident of Toronto, was born in Jamaica and has had several lives, among them civil servant, diplomat, journalist, and radio and television director. With the publication of Blue Mountain Trouble , he can add another incarnation to the list, that of novelist. What a debut this is!

High up in what must be Jamaica's Blue Mountains, in fictional Top Valley, 11-year-old twins Penelope (a.k.a. Pollyread) and Jackson Gilmore are on the cusp of the next stage of their young lives: graduation from Grade 6 at Marcus Garvey Primary School to big schools in big, bad “Town,” which may or may not be Kingston.

It emerges early on in the novel that the delightfully precocious Pollyread is not only the top student of the year, but also the first student from her school to win a scholarship to St. Giles School in Town. Jackson, a green thumb and a whiz at math, but not much of a student thus far, gets his second-choice school, which means that this pair's intertwined lives may now go in different directions.

On this scaffolding a novel of many delights has been built. Top Valley is a kind of Eden, often shrouded in mist, home to a vaporizing goat ghost and “duppy” and obeah magic, as well as the relics of colonial education and religion systems. It is a hive of buzzing activity where subsistence crops are grown and sold, a place of joys and sorrows, gossip and hard truths, populated by characters so vividly rendered via dialogue and action that the reader will be loathe to leave it or them.

Central to all of it is the Gilmore family, the aforementioned Pollyread and Jackson and their parents Maisie and Royston. There seems to be something wrong with Mama, which puzzles her children, but more pressing is the eponymous “trouble” in paradise, in the form of Jammy, Top Valley's “bad bwoy,” a 20-year-old wannabe Rasta who has squatted on Poppa's land. Not only has he appropriated what isn't his, he's also growing an illegal and dangerous crop on it.

Bringing Jammy to heel, the revelation of a long-kept family secret and discovering what's really “wrong” with Mama are high points, but not necessarily the highest, of this splendid novel.