“It was a bit too small and showed his belly button. Rudy is a blue creature with a piggy snout, bunny ears, a thin, tufted tail, and a distraught look on his face. Readers are invited to follow him as he searches for the sweater. The natural audience for this offering is a little older than its main character: they will easily identify with Trixie’s grief and at the same time feel superior to her hapless parent-and rejoice wholeheartedly at the happy reunion. Willems is a master of body language Trixie’s despair and her daddy’s frazzlement as expressive as her joy (“KNUFFLE BUNNY!”) and his triumph at the excavation of the errant bunny from the washing machine. Retro-style (think Rocky and Bullwinkle) cartoons depict the human players in the drama sepia-tinted photographs of the artist’s Brooklyn neighborhood, framed in pale green, provide the backdrops. Readers will deduce what Trixie’s clueless daddy does not: her toy bunny has been left behind. Trixie realized something.” Her desperate attempts to communicate (“AGGLE FLAGGLE KLABBLE!”) proving fruitless, Trixie resorts to time-honored toddler tactics: she bawls and goes boneless. Trixie and her daddy go on an errand to the local laundromat, an odyssey that takes the intrepid pair through the park and past the school and back-but “a block or so later. Anguish begets language in this tale of a toddler’s lost stuffie.
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