Bound To Stay Bound

Publishers Weekly - 01/26/2026 In a buoyant, species-focused picture book, Gianferrari (Rain and the Reading Horse) and Wicks (You and the Bowerbird) take readers on a comics-style trip to Maine’s Eastern Egg Rock Island. Matter-of-fact narration and digitally colored pencil-drawn panels portray a puffin colony that’s "as noisy as a city," the air above dotted with onomatopoeic seabird cries. While lightly anthropomorphized puffins are endearingly portrayed-a heart pops between one pair’s striped orange beaks as they bond-the harsh realities of survival and puffin parenting come through clearly. Butterfish, too big for pufflings to manage, now dominate the warming waters where smaller, swallowable fish once thrived, and the gulls who share the island steal fish and, in one unflinching panel, even snatch a puffling from a burrow. But the primary family’s young puffin perseveres, and one starlit night while the gulls sleep, slips away, diving gracefully to join a raft of other puffins in "a floating city on the sea" before nature’s cycle begins anew. Honest, hopeful, and brimming with visual drama, this fondly rendered puffin primer offers budding naturalists an instantly accessible introduction to wildlife resilience. An afterword provides more detail about the birds. Ages 4-8. Author’s agent: Ammi-Joan Paquette, Aevitas Creative. Illustrator’s agent: Bernadette Baker-Baughman, Victoria Sanders & Assoc. (Apr.) - Copyright 2026 Publishers Weekly used with permission.

Booklist - 03/01/2026 Experience the life cycle of a puffin, from the egg hatching into a chick to the chick growing into an adult and ultimately causing the cycle to repeat. Real, current survival challenges that puffins face are explored, including chick starvation caused by declining fish populations. While longer than a typical picture book, this one keeps information accessible through cartoony illustrations and story-based presentation. Some pages appear in traditional picture-book spreads, while others use graphic- novel-style panels, creating a structure that stands out. Before the title page, a short comic about puffin nesting season serves as a unique introduction. The approachable and engaging account presents solid information without feeling like a textbook, making it especially appealing to readers who may shy away from dense nonfiction. With expressive illustrations and inventive graphic elements, this narrativedriven nonfiction brings the puffin life cycle vividly to life. - Copyright 2026 Booklist.