In Andreu Llinàs Durán's My Favorite Animal, translated from the French by Carine Laforest, the day-in-the-life-of-a-kid picture book meets the kid-who-loves-animals picture book. The inclusion of a Where's Waldo?-esque search challenge yields a book that adds up to much more than the sum of its parts.
"Ariadna LOVES animals!" announces a narrating parent (who remains largely off-page throughout the book). Ariadna may LOVE all animals, but she does have a favorite, and it's the reader's job to "see if you can guess which one it is" as she proceeds through her day. Ariadna starts her morning "as cuddly as a cat"; an illustration shows her and her mom at the center of a feline friendship circle. When it's time to get dressed, she becomes "Ariadna the squirming lion"; an illustration finds her wriggling along with her leonine pals. She finally gets dressed (she looks "as majestic as a peacock"), goes swimming ("as swiftly as a shark"), and so on.
Ariadna's favorite animal? The book's penultimate page discloses the giveaway: at least two cats appear in every spread, sometimes camouflaged. This revelation will send readers scuttling back to the beginning to hunt for kitties in Durán's bewitching art, in which he employs a unique palette for every spread--blues and greens for the swimming pool scene, autumnal reds and browns for a park scene, black and white for a portrait of a sleeping Ariadna. As for what she's dreaming about: the final spread shows her at a party where not only all animals but all colors are welcome. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author