The cover of this picture book, featuring a soft pencil sketch of a small person wearing an enormous bird costume, immediately invites curiosity; the juxtaposition of scale is so whimsical and poignant that one wonders what story this character has to tell. The Day I Became a Bird (Kids Can, $16.95) reveals itself to be a tale of first love: our young protagonist falls for classmate Sylvia, “who only has eyes for birds.” He constructs his giant costume to win her attention—and, though we see the small indignities that befall him, our hero is focused solely on catching Sylvia’s eye. Guridi’s spare drawings, in which the book’s brown-egg-colored pages wonderfully offset the white highlights of the bird costume’s eyes and Sylvia’s chalk sketches, perfectly complement French author Ingrid Chabbert’s sweet, simply told romance. Ages 5-8.