Bear, from Annemarie van Haeringen’s Beer is op Vlinder (Bear Loves Butterfly, 2004), is struggling with this problem. He’s seriously in love with Butterfly, who is as beautiful as ‘a cut-out piece of heaven’. Full of enthusiasm, he tries to win her heart, but Butterfly doesn’t understand his message of love. She erases the hearts that he draws on the trees, and she thinks the house he builds for her is too high. Bear becomes so frustrated that he sets his building on fire. The resulting heart-shaped clouds of smoke cannot be misunderstood, however, and so Butterfly falls for Bear after all. The simple illustrations say it all in this straightforward and poetic story about the art of communication.