A WHALE IN THE BATHTUB

This Australian import offers up something of a fish story about a whale.

Although he claims to have found a whale in his bathtub, it seems that Bruno’s family fancies him a boy who cries wolf. Neither his parents nor his siblings believe him when he says he can’t bathe because of the whale’s presence, and readers are left to wonder whether the scenes showing him with the (rather demanding) whale are imagined or part of a fantastic reality. By the book’s end it seems the latter is the case: when his sister goes into the bathroom after Bruno’s predicament is solved with a blowhole shower, she finds both the whale and a whale-size mess. Throughout, Jellett’s illustrations augment the text’s humor with lots of movement and expressive characters, and such details as endpapers decorated with a krill motif in reference to the whale’s favorite food provide visual interest that expands on the story. Bruno and his family are uniformly portrayed as dark-haired and sepia-skinned.

Good, clean fun