Strange Creatures
by Cristina Sitja Rubio and Cristóbal León; illus. by Cristina Sitja Rubio
Primary    Kids Can    48 pp.
10/25    9781525313806    $21.99

Bears, rabbits, foxes, and other small animals are living happily in a piney forest when a sign advertising a party lures them away to a revelry where they dance the cha-cha and eat “a lot of chocolate cake. Way too much!” They return home to find a horror: the trees, their homes, are gone. Desperate for shelter, they find “a mountain of all sorts of objects”—a dump. They try to use the things they find there to build new homes, which prove unstable. Naive-style illustrations in gouache and colored pencil enhance the first-person-plural narration from the animals’ collective point of view. Eventually, the animals realize that “strange creatures,” humans, have taken their trees. Bears wearing human masks approach people in their homes to discuss the problem, with predictably disastrous results. The animals shift strategy and, in consultation with the “strange creatures’ small guardians” (dogs and cats), hatch their own plan to turn the tables and give the humans a comeuppance. The humorous tone invites readers to consider their own actions, creating an effective, entertaining, and approachable lesson in habitat preservation. This book (previously published in French and then translated from the Portuguese edition) will find a happy home in schools and libraries for lessons, storytimes, and one-on-one sharing.

From the November/December 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.