Heidi Aubrey’s 2025 picture book Ada and the Goat is full of graceful images and uses space well. For example, on the first page Ada is carrying a potted tree. A few leaves blow off, and drift onto the previous page, adding color and interest to the page stating rights and publication information (that most people skip). That page tells readers the images were created with watercolor…but the gentle colors would have told us that.
The book’s premise and situation both work well. Ada’s carrying that apple tree because she dreams of having this perfect house, one that’s quiet and organized, where she can grow apples. Then she finds a goat “caught in a fence.” She frees it, cares for its injured leg, and lets it stay with her while she’s making her house just the way she wants it.
Except it is a goat, and that means it gets into things, eats things, and climbs on things, ruining Ada’s dream of the perfect home. It doesn’t just eat her apples–it eats part of her apple trees. She eventually yells at it to go away, and it does.
Ada finds herself sad, lonely, and worrying about the goat. She wishes it would come back. And it does, or rather, she does, because there are a bunch of baby goats on the roof too. Ada changes what she wants from life, and is happy, even though things are different. Perhaps because they are different.
There’s one real problem here: it’s too easy. Ada doesn’t do anything to bring her goat back. She essentially sits and sighs, and the goat comes back.
Otherwise, a pleasant book, and one that is nice to flip through to see the images of the goat and house.
