You don’t have to know that the author of this book is just 10 years old to be enchanted by its story. Brown Bear loves playing hide-and-seek with his friends Butterfly and Bird, but he’s not particularly good at it because he’s, well, big. Bear just wants to be small like his friends in the same way that so many of us want to change things about ourselves.
But an unexpected event shows Bear that there are some big advantages to not being small and that each of us has something special to offer. Sarah Aliya’s illustrations beautifully capture the book’s characters, their feelings and their relationships with each other. She is a talented young writer and illustrator with an early knack for knowing how to tell a good story in an engaging way.