; ;

Mine. Yours.

There are only three words used to tell this story: ours, yours, and mine. Normally I am a big fan of wordless and nearly-wordless picture books. But this one seems to struggle with making its point. I think it’s trying to say it’s better to share than to worry about what’s yours and what’s mine. It begins by showing a young panda entering the cave of an adult panda asking if it’s theirs, to which the adult panda replies that it is his. After a series of “this is mine; this is yours,” the adult panda sends the youngster off with a kite. As the young panda wanders through the forest following his kite, he keeps running into other woodland creatures who are possessive of their stuff. Eventually the little critters all grab onto the string of the kite and are flying away until the grown panda pulls them back to earth and then they all end up hanging out together in the cave, sharing all their stuff. It’s just a little vague.