The Buddy Bench

A school playground can be a solitary place for a kid without playmates; in one survey, 80 percent of 8- to 10-year-old respondents described being lonely at some point during a school day.

The Buddy Bench by Patty Brozo brings a playground to raucous life with its charming cast of kids, while Mike Deas's illustrations invest their games with imaginary planes to fly, dragons to tame, and elephants to ride. These kids match their imaginations with empathy, identifying and swooping up the lonely among them.

Buddy benches are appearing in schoolyards around the country. Introduced from Germany in 2014, the concept is simple: When a child sits on the bench, it's a signal to other kids to ask him or her to play.