TELEPHONE TALES

An Italian traveling salesman has promised his daughter regular bedtime stories, so he calls her nightly from a pay phone. To save money, he must keep his stories short.

Whimsical in tone, many of these 67 short stories involve language play, such as tales about inventing numbers (“a tricyclon of squintillions”) and a boy who asks impossible questions (“Why do whiskers have cats?”). Some stories are philosophical in nature, questioning war (in one story, a “festive concert of bells” rings from a cannon) and power (a child who is literally transparent alters everyone’s views of a tyrant). A string of closing stories centers on other planets, including one about a chick from Eighth Mars who tells everyone that “the word ‘enemy’ is nonexistent outside of Earth.” Each story is accompanied by an illustration, many inventive and done in highly saturated colors; most humans are depicted with magenta skin. Many stories include gatefold illustrations; others are illustrations on inset small pages, attached to the recto of a spread. Virtually all playfully ask readers to stop and think. Originally written 40 years ago by an Italian author, the stories hold up, though during a time in the United States in which monkey imagery is being reconsidered in children’s books, readers may bristle at a story about dimwitted anthropomorphic monkeys walking in circles in a cage at the zoo.

Offbeat tales for readers in the mood for something whimsically contemplative.