THE NIGHT IGUANA LEFT HOME

It’s not that Iguana is angry or anything. After all, she has her own e-mail address and all the anchovy pizza she wants; she loves her human pal, Alison, who treats her as a best friend should. Iguana pines for the sun and surf and as many miles as she can get between herself and Schenectady, New York, where the winters know no mercy. So she grabs a bus to Key West, where she lives the good life until her allowance runs out. Then she has to wash dishes in a restaurant, and on the night the restaurant serves a special iguana, Iguana lights out for a stamp-licking job at the post office, then tucks herself into a parcel addressed to Schenectady. The warm south is in her blood (this comes as no surprise, given Goembel’s wry, alluring scenes of the place) and she heads back to Big Pine Key, commuting back to Alison for anchovy pizza when it beckons. McDonald’s story is wonderfully alive, with the iguana a bit of a cool cat, and the Keys exotic but available. It is full of love, independence, and natural law, and the slice of biogeography can’t hurt. (Picture book. 5-9)