You Never Know! Lucy and the String by Vanessa Roeder

LUCY FOUND A STRING.

SO SHE GAVE IT A TUG.

Not much happens, so she tugs harder, and then she gives the red string a yank!

LUCY MET HANK!

GROWL!

Hank is one very crotchety bear. But who wouldn't be? It seems that the red string Lucy has been pulling so cavalierly is, or was... the yarn from Hank's knit trousers.

Lucy tries to coax a better mood out of Hank by hamming it up with the red yarn. She makes herself a silly, droopy cat hat, an Abraham Lincoln top hat, a lasso, and spells out an apt word.

YEEHAW!

She whirls the yarn to make it into pantaloons for herself and Hank. He scowls. She twirls up a red tutu, but it, too, is too, too skimpy to cover Hank's, er, situation.

HANK WAS STILL A BARE BEAR.

HE JUST WANTED PANTS.

Then Lucy has an inspiration. She quickly knits herself a kitschy sweater which hangs well below her knees. Then she takes off her black and white dress and offers it to Hank as a skirt. Amazingly, he likes it! Who knew? Problem solved! So Lucy impulsively snips the string between herself and Hank.

Now why is Hank SAD? Can Lucy knit up a solution to this sudden sense of separation?

In a sweet and silly story of novel forms of fashion and friendship found, Vanessa Roeder's brand-new Lucy and the String (Dial Books, 2018) creates a way to knit together an unlikely pair with a special shared bond. Author Roeder's text is as as simple as her minimalist palette of blackish, red, and white, fashioning appealing characters--Lucy with her spiky black pigtails with red bows, and Hank, whose fur seems to knitted in a herringbone tweed pattern, from watercolors, pencil, and "lots of digital string." Roeder's "string" is, of course, a symbol of the ties that bind as well as the tie that links the story together, and youngsters will sense that metaphor subliminally even as they snicker at the pants-less bare-bottomed bear Hank. Kirkus sews it all up, saying, "An imaginative and entertaining tale of crafting and friendship."