HOT CHIPS, MAD FISH & OTHER TALES

A collection of animal stories for beginning readers.

Marasciulo’s collection of five illustrated stories is designed for very beginning readers, with a comic book–like illustration style that straddles the gap between picture book and graphic novel. The opening story, “This Is Pat,” introduces readers to the book’s sole human character, a White man with long hair who wears torn blue pants and a matching vest. Pat has an affinity for animals, who arrange themselves in a stack on his head over the course of the story. In “Pat Had a Ship,” an unfortunate sailing adventure gives Pat an opportunity to connect with more animals, this time on a floating log. In “Bud,” about a dog who is drawn to mud, Pat tries to keep his pal clean. “Zig and Zag” follows a pair of bugs Pat tries to keep in a box. Pat is absent from the book’s final story, “The Tunnel,” in which a group of bugs run away from a tick only to find that he isn’t as scary as they had believed. The book, which rarely has more than a dozen words to a page, uses simple syntax and vocabulary (“Then Frog got on the log”), keeping the text within reach of the earliest of readers. This occasionally leads to awkward verb use (“Bud did hop in the mud”), but it never interferes with comprehension, and each story is a fully realized narrative despite its brevity and limited word choice. Changochamango’s colorful cartoonish illustrations—sometimes a single frame to a page, occasionally three or more—do an excellent job of capturing the playful essence of Pat and his companions and clearly depict the actions described in the text, another useful tool for readers who need help deciphering the words. Readers who have exhausted the Elephant and Piggie oeuvre may find the book an enjoyable alternative, though the extremely simple text may limit the rereading potential.

A simple but engaging and charming work.