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TUFF FLUFF by Scott Nash

TUFF FLUFF

The Case of Duckie’s Missing Brain

by Scott Nash & illustrated by Scott Nash

Pub Date: May 1st, 2004
ISBN: 0-7636-1882-9
Publisher: Candlewick

Illustrator Nash flies solo with a plush-boiled whodunit set amidst the shadowed cardboard cartons of “Los Attic.” Responding to the pleas of a big blue teddy bear with a voice “as thick and smooth as catsup,” Flopsy Flips Rabbit, a.k.a. Tuff Fluff, P.I., hares off to find out why bookish Duckie has lost all of his words except “Quack.” As it turns out, the stuffing in Duckie’s head has taken a powder—but a trip into hostile Beantown (“There was no love lost between the beanbags and stuffs”), a flash of inspiration, and a bit of surgery later, Duckie’s right as rain, and reciting Alice in Wonderland to a mixed crowd of admirers. Nash populates his moonlit mean streets with brightly colored, new-looking or neatly repaired toys, including a lagomorphic gumshoe with an eyepatch and exaggeratedly long, rumpled ears. Neither these pictures nor the overlong narrative capture the snappy tone of David Wisniewski’s Tough Cookie (1999), Margie Palatini’s Web Files (2001), or similar takeoffs, but still young readers will never regard their castoff beanie babies in quite the same light again. (Picture book. 6-8)