Bright & Early! Early Bird by Toni Yuly

EARLY BIRD LIKES TO WAKE UP EARLY.

She stretches tall as she can and eyes a butterfly, already up and on the wing. The sun is coming up, the sky is blue, and the morning air is fresh.

It's time to see what else is UP!

Early Bird runs across the bright green grass, through the dewy flowers, and dodges under a spider web. She is in luck as she zips by a cat, only one eye yet open and too sleepy for a chase.

But Early Bird is on a morning mission. She soon finds herself in the garden, where she discovers there is someone else up and at it--Early Worm!

Toni Yuly's captivating debut picture book for the youngest readers, Early Bird (Feiwel and Friends, 2014), is a standout, with her digital art bright but classic with a pleasing use of  clean lines and shape. Early Bird herself is streamlined and curvy, with the big head and round eyes of a young one, little symmetrical wings of black and short legs against her red body.  In clean, stylized lines, everything reduced to its simplest essence but still clearly identifiable, each page a pleasure to the eye.  Yuly's story is as fresh as the morning dew, full of  the exuberance of the young.   As Publishers Weekly puts it, "This Early Bird does indeed get the worm, and what she does (and doesn’t) do with it creates some fun moments of suspense and humor in the final pages."

And that Early Worm? Not to worry, as he and Early Bird breakfast on strawberries together! There's only one thing left to make this morning complete. Birdsong! And Early Bird's got that one covered, too! Pair this one for older tots with Jill Esbaum's springy new story, I Hatched! for a veritably vernal story time.