Information and stories about the habits and antics of animals fascinate young children. These picture books, featuring big cats in their natural settings, will intrigue and delight preschoolers and primary readers. The first title is a story about the endangered Florida panther. The second title is an adaptation of a Chinese tiger fable. Both books are visually striking and ideal candidates for show-and-tell readings in classrooms and library story times.

Panther is both a literary and a lovely looking picture book. Obviously, its creative team, American author Jonathan London and Canadian illustrator Paul Morin, share a keen and compatible interest in the natural world. London’s concise text beautifully conveys both the powerful and predatory nature of the Florida panther and the exotic (to most readers) nature of the panther’s habitat. London’s panther “glides,” “melts,” “sways,” and “scouts” in a world of cypress, strangler fig, saw palmetto, and slash pine. These are words that beg to be read aloud in hushed tones. Morin, whose multi-award-winning works include The Orphan Boy, The Ghost Dance, and Animal Dreaming, further develops Panther’s atmosphere with oil paintings of the Florida Everglades and its inhabitants. His tawny panther paces, pauses, and crouches. Grasses twitch, water ripples, and fireflies shine in his images of the panther’s largely blue-and-green wetland world.

Readers will be drawn to Panther by its cover subject’s brooding stare and its endpapers’ clever illusion of arriving in and departing from the Everglades by air. They will find London’s lean, double-spaced text easy to read on clay- and mustard-coloured panels that share two-page spreads with Morin’s illustrations. At the book’s end, they will discover the panther’s motivation for its hunt, a map pinpointing the Everglades’ location in southern Florida, and a page of facts about Florida panthers.

Who Is Queen of the Forest? is a short tale about a tigress who assumes she is Queen of the Forest because the other animals fear her size, strength, and appetite. However, when a vixen (female fox) challenges her one day, the tigress finds herself questioning her longtime assumption. Beijia Lin, who has translated Canadian literature (including Anne of Green Gables and several short stories by Alistair MacLeod) into Chinese, retells this Chinese fable in English quite successfully. Mark Thurman, illustrator of more than 35 books, supports Lin’s text with richly coloured, double-page portrayals of a sinewy but not-too-threatening tiger, a decidedly unfazed fox, and a bamboo forest full of birds, deer, goats, and monkeys. Readers with a keen eye will discover other animals and insects in some of the illustrations. They may also note the book’s interesting use of cover and page space, including a preliminary introduction to story protagonists in the cover art, Chinese and English story notes on the endpapers, and boxes of double-spaced, easy-to-read text strategically superimposed on illustrations.

With its good looks and roots in the trickster tale tradition, Who Is Queen of the Forest? will appeal to story lovers of all ages. Its sly brain-over-brawn conclusion also makes it a useful resource for teaching children about critical, analytical thinking.