By Cyrisse Jaffee

Children will delight in two books that celebrate creativity and imagination, and one that shows a new way of seeing the world through maps.

An Adventure for Lia and Lion by Al Rodin. Alfred A. Knopf, 2023

As Edward Imagined: A Story of Edward Gorey in Three Acts by Matthew Burgess. Alfred A. Knopf, 2024.

The Shape of Things: How Mapmakers Picture Our World by Dean Robbins. Pictures by Matt Tavares. Alfred A. Knopf, 2024.

Young Lia is searching for a pet — a pet “she could take on an adventure.” Coincidentally, Lion is also looking for a pet — “a pet who would follow his lead.” When they encounter each other in the meadow, each refuses the other’s invitation to be “pets.”

Lia forges ahead into some tall grasses, but then realizes that she might need Lion after all. Together they discover “berries and toadstools and huge ancient trees.” But then it starts to thunder and rain, and Lion is afraid. “Let’s think of it like a party,” Lia suggests, even though she is a little afraid too. They comfort each other and then decide it’s time to go home. Lia compliments Lion on being “wild,” and Lion says, “I like that best about you too.”

This is a lighthearted story with subtle lessons about friendship and compromise. Preschoolers will especially enjoy the big fuzzy and expressive lion and the slight but bold Lia. The colorful oversized drawings, in gold and green tones, add energy and appeal, inviting the reader to join in the fantasy and the fun.

Edward Gorey might be a less-than-typical subject for a children’s picture book biography, but Matthew Burgess manages to convey the artist’s unconventional life and art with verve and panache in As Edward Imagined: A Story of Edward Gorey in Three Acts.

Act One takes place in Chicago, where Edward was born. He was a precocious child; after learning to read at age three and a half, Edward explored his father’s library “like an inquisitive cat, pawing this and reading that.” Early influences included Alice in Wonderland and Winne-the-Pooh, but when he read Dracula (before he was six!), Edward found his true inspiration. He showed his artistic talents at a young age, as well as his “flair for doing things his own delightfully peculiar way, like painting his toenails green and strutting down a fancy street in bare feet.”

After moving to New York, Edward became enamored of the ballet, attending “nearly every performance” of the New York City Ballet “for over twenty years.” He became an illustrator for others while writing his own stories, finally gaining success when he designed the costumes and sets for a play about — you-guessed-it — Dracula. Despite his fame, he soon left the city for a cottage on Cape Cod, where he continued his artistic career in his funky, cozy home, surrounded by no less than six cats.

Adults may know Gorey’s illustrations from the opening sequence of the Masterpiece Mystery! television series, although Gorey also illustrated many kids’ books, too. (Gorey’s distinctive style — macabre, gothic, surrealistic — is made more kid-friendly in Marc Majewski’s illustrations.) But it’s Gorey’s “daring to live the life he imagined” that may inspire kids, especially older elementary-school kids, more than anything else.

Today’s precise nature of mapmaking may seem a far cry from Gorey’s unusual illustrations, but it took curiosity and imagination to develop the ideas surrounding and the actual construction of maps.

In a story that spans prehistory to today, Dean Robbins traces mapmaking in The Shape of Things: How Mapmakers Picture Our World from a variety of perspectives: cave paintings, rock carvings by Native Americans, Egyptian drawings on papyrus, ancient Babylonian tablets, Chinese maps on wood, and Polynesian maps of shells and sticks. After European ships circumvented the globe, new tools were used to help people transport from place to place. The oldest surviving globe was crafted out of papier-mâché by German mapmaker Martin Behaim in the 1400s.

This is a useful introduction to a topic that uses both science and art, even though the advent of GPS and smartphones have made map-reading an endangered skill. Although it doesn’t even hint at current controversies about maps (many world maps, especially those used in school, have been criticized for bias toward Western European countries), its nod to the contributions from many cultures, as well as its acknowledgment of women cartographers, makes this a nice addition to a first- or second-grade classroom library.

Cyrisse Jaffee is a former children’s and YA librarian, children’s book editor, and a creator of educational materials for WGBH. She holds a master’s degree in Library Science from Simmons College and lives in Newton, MA.