This new series for very young children seems deliberately designed to evoke the early classics of children’s literature with their charming animal characters. The mole sisters are a delightful pair whose optimism brightens up even the dullest day. In The Mole Sisters and the Rainy Day, they find fun inside when the rain fills a small pool in their leaky mole hole. In The Mole Sisters and the Piece of Moss, they cheer up a piece of moss by taking it to the top of a mountain. In both books, the mole sisters find simple, fun solutions to everyday problems.

Schwartz tells her stories in very few words, mostly in the direct speech of the two sisters. Her lovely illustrations interact intimately with the texts, supplying important information and depicting a fresh natural world from a mole’s point of view. The sparse text does result in some confusion, however, in The Mole Sisters and the Piece of Moss. After carrying the moss to the top of the hill, the sisters say goodbye and leave on their own, only to be covered in more moss or grass when they’ve rolled to the bottom. Most children will wonder if this is the same moss that they befriended earlier, and the answer is not clear. But this is nit-picking. These stories mark the beginning of a charming new series aimed at an oft-neglected age group.