My Best Friend Is a Lion
by Deb Pilutti; illus. by the author
Preschool, Primary    Putnam    32 pp.
1/26    9780593860137    $18.99

Who needs human friends when you have a steadfast, potentially terrifying animal companion by your side? A lonely young girl imagines a day spent with a lion in this winsome picture book. After mane-grooming and tea-sharing, the pair heads boldly to the city park—“without an adult,” the narrator notes proudly—to march right past her two (human) friends who have “decided that best friends should be in twos, not threes.” Shocked and amazed at the leonine spectacle, those two follow, beginning what will become a long parade of fascinated fans who are visibly delighted to watch a lion shoot baskets, score free ice cream, and disrupt traffic. In digitally assembled gouache, pastel, and watercolor art, Pilutti creates a cohesive, stylized cityscape with loose lines and plenty of texture. The bright-orange, blurry-edged lion leaps out against mostly cooler backdrops. Dissonance between the narrator’s confident words describing the perks of lion friendship and the illustrated reactions of terrified adults adds both humor and a layer of emotional depth: she wants companionship, yes, but also to wield a little power. A happy ending arrives when the narrator is revealed to be illustrating her fantasies with sidewalk chalk; in the absence of an actual lion, sharing her creativity both cheers her and attracts friends old and new.

From the January/February 2026 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.