With an estimated 175,000 copies sold, last year’s Buffalo Fluffalo proved exceptionally popular for a picture book debut. Penned by comedy writer and memoirist Bess Kalb (Nobody Will Tell You This but Me) and illustrated by Erin Kraan, the rhyming book introduced a grouchy bison, his easygoing friends, and a thundershower that flattens his fur, revealing that his imposing size is mostly fluff. Now Kalb and Kraan have no fewer than three sequels on the way, starting with next week’s release of Buffalo Fluffalo and Puffalo.
The original read-aloud described a “snuffalo, scruffalo, surly old buffalo,” who greets prairie animals with a stern “rebuffalo” but deep down craves acceptance. In the sequel, Buffalo Fluffalo meets a bison calf, Puffalo, who wins him over.
Kalb, an Emmy-nominated former writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live! and a contributor to the New Yorker, said the original Buffalo Fluffalo emerged fully formed when she began making her young son laugh at “-uffalo” wordplay. She circulated a manuscript among family and friends, then ran it by her agent, Erin Malone at WME, who recognized a picture book in the making.
Random House Studio VP and executive director Maria Modugno acquired Buffalo Fluffalo in 2021, and VP and publisher Lee Wade took over the project when Modugno retired in 2024. Wade now edits the series. “We knew early on we had something special when colleagues started quoting Buffalo Fluffalo in meetings, saying, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enuffalo!’ ” Wade told PW. She saw the grumpy bison as a familiar type, “that kid who seems big and confident on the outside but is tender and vulnerable underneath.”
Two years later, when Kalb’s second son was born, so was the idea for Buffalo Fluffalo and Puffalo. In the story, a napping Fluffalo is interrupted by a wailing baby bison, whom he grudgingly shows around the prairie. Puffalo’s “tiny, spiky sweetness” balances the bigger diva’s moods, editor Wade said, and Fluffalo comes to like his small companion. Kalb wrote the book about children adapting to the needs of family members or playground acquaintances. “The second book came from seeing both of my kids have to live in this new world together,” she said, “and having my oldest, who at that point was just over two years old, go through this world-flipping change where he was not the center of the universe anymore.” She wanted to write “a silly, funny, cute manual for going through any seismic change,” whether warming to a sibling, going to school, or joining a team.
The series features illustrations by Erin Kraan, an illustrator who also works with Jory John (Everything’s Wrong!, out now) and Kristen Tracy (I Am Speedy, May 2026). In her books with Kalb, Kraan layers woodcut and linocut prints with handmade textures and gouache painting, then polishes her traditional artwork with digital tools. Her printmaking technique can be seen in the curlicues of the bisons’ fur, the prairie landscape’s grasses, and the dramatic clouds filling the wide skies.
To design Buffalo Fluffalo for the first book, Kraan said, “I focused on capturing his essential traits: an abundance of fluff, a clear visual link to a buffalo, and the ability to convey a wide range of emotions in a way that feels warm and approachable.” She focused on Fluffalo’s oversize head, horns, and snout: “I gave him large, expressive eyes and contrastingly small, thin legs, hinting at the true size hidden beneath the fur.” Her design for Puffalo, she said, emphasized “puffiness over form,” with “expressive eyes to communicate emotion” and make him irresistibly cute.
Those design details have been carried over into MerryMakers plush toys; Fluffalo is already available as a stuffed animal, and a Puffalo stuffie is on the way.
Kalb believes that emotional warmth is the series’ strength. “Both books end with a snuggly hug, which I think is essential to any parent and child’s reading experience,” she said. “These books take place on a very happy prairie, where the main character learns that a kind and gentle world is possible if he accepts it.” She noted that the next Fluffalo book will be “about conflict resolution, with kids starting school and learning about apologizing, something maybe adults could learn a thing or two from.”
She also posits that read-aloud can be a little like standup comedy, and she writes with a tough crowd in mind. “I write for bedtime and story time,” Kalb said, “and you’re sometimes starting with no opener, with a cold audience. Like, people have just had their bath, they’ve gotten their hair combed, they’re in pajamas, they are not happy. It’s important to start with a character who matches their harrumph-iness and then finds out that everything is okay.”
Buffalo Fluffalo and Puffalo by Bess Kalb, illus. by Erin Kraan. Random House Studio, $18.99 Sept. 30 ISBN 978-0-593-81030-9
