I Am Dodo — Kae Nishimura

This tale of a unique bird, a lonely professor, and some urban magic is both funny and touching. An unusually smart dodo has managed to escape extinction and is living happily in a big city. The city is also home to a professor, the only person who is sure that somewhere, somehow, a dodo is alive. A chance encounter turns these two into hunted and hunter: the professor wants to capture Dodo and show the scientific world that he was right . . . but Dodo doesn't want to live in a cage. How this standoff develops into a friendship, proving that indeed anything can happen in the big city, is told in Kae Nishimura's fresh, original text and distinctively comic illustrations.