THE SURPRISE VISITOR

An atavistic charm hovers around Kangas’s authorial debut, with its genial story of good-neighborliness and its fully fleshed, closely observed art full of soft woodland colors. Charming because it neatly skirts mawkishness as its sweet, clueless characters trundle along in their warmhearted way. An egg rolls to a stop outside Edgar Small’s mouse-house door. Edgar mistakes the blue egg for one of Mr. Crustydome’s children, but the turtle denies ownership. Instead, he suggests sprucing up the beast with some buttercup-yellow paint. On through the wildwood, as each potential parent can’t accept the egg, but has ideas about how to make it look more appealing. The gathering crowd finally arrives at Mrs. Fleedle’s perch high in a tree, with Mrs. Fleedle in a state because she’s lost her egg—she fails to recognize the dolled-up item before her. Then it conveniently hatches; Mrs. Fleedle has no doubts about the insides of the strange exterior, a lesson not lost on the parents of many teenagers, but one that will also make harmonious sounds with much younger souls, if in their case as much about security as identity. (Picture book. 3-6)