The Bear and the Piano by David Litchfield has so much to like about it, I’m going to ramble. In the beginning, the bear sees a piano in the forest. He fiddles with it and over time, his skill at playing piano grows (it’s not magical talent) until a crowd of bears is drawn to listen. He goes to the city and becomes famous, and though the city is everything he’d hoped it would be (and there’s a beautiful nighttime spread to show this loveliness and yearning together) he misses his friends from the forest. When he gets to the clearing where his piano used to be, it’s gone, and at first he thinks his friends were angry or forgot him, the ending is warm and perfect.
