Moose is the only animal not busily preparing for winter as this story opens. But Moose is busy in ways he doesn’t realize. When a flock of birds flying south lands on his antlers, he’s busy being a tree. In winter, when he carries the other animals across the river to visit Beaver before the water freezes, he’s busy being a ferryboat. In spring, Moose becomes a nesting spot for a bird. Only when summer comes does Moose have an actual plan to occupy his time, although it doesn’t turn out quite as he thought it would in Nancy Van Laan’s tender, sweetly funny advanced beginning reader about a lumbering creature with a gentle heart. Moose and his animal friends are illustrated by Amy Rusch in ink and colored pencil. They made their debut in Moose Tales (Houghton Mifflin, 1999). (Ages 4–6)