In her first outing as author, illustrator Hudson (Animal Teachers) keeps her story simple: Bear longs to be a duck but discovers he’s better at being a bear. Her watercolor-and-ink artwork is polished, and her narrative voice engages from the start: “He was tired of sleeping all winter. His fur felt hot in the summer. And he was sick of all the angry bees.” Bear’s low spirits are plain to see as he trudges across a spread with a beehive under his arm and a haunted look on his face. When he spots a mother duck leading her ducklings across a brook, he’s transported: “Yes! He could get used to being a duck.” A splashing, crashing tutoring session makes it clear that Bear is a poor duck candidate. Children will soon realize that the problem isn’t that Bear is the wrong kind of animal—he just needs a friend. Fortunately, Mother Duck accepts him as he is. “You make a really good bear,” she assures him as they sit on a tree limb together. Readers will gladly accept Bear as their friend, too. Ages 4–8. (May)