I pulled this book off our new picture book shelf and made my story time around it. Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers is the story of a boy who meets a penguin and tries to help him find his way home. The boy tells stories to the penguin the whole way to the South Pole. He leaves him there on an iceberg, but as the boy rows back home, he realizes that the penguin wasn't lost - he was lonely. The pictures are charming; the kids particularly liked the final illustration, which shows the boy and the penguin in their rowboat with a pod of whales (some argued that they were sharks) swimming along underneath them.I picked three other stories to go along with it: Small Bear Lost by the always-child-friendly Martin Waddell, The Stray Dog by Marc Simont, and another new-ish book, Below by Nina Crews. My colleague recommended this last book, which her 3-year old daughter requests often. It is illustrated with photographs of Jack, the boy, and Guy - an action figure who explores the mysterious area under the stairs. This was a big hit with the story time group - they particularly enjoyed the drawings of what Jack imagines might be under the stairs.
Two other titles good stories within this theme are The Pocket Dogs by Margaret Wild and Lucky Socks by Carrie Weston.
