Favorite Animal Friends

Isn’t it funny that so many picture books (and even older children’s books) have animals as characters? It never strikes me as odd that the animals talk, wear clothes, inter-species mingle, and are basically human. I just think it’s interesting that books for adults do not do that (with the striking exception of David Sedaris’s Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk.) Today I thought I’d share with you a few of our favorite animals friends from our collection.

Little Whistle is an adorable guinea pig.  In fact, we have three guinea pigs ourselves and one of them looks so much like Little Whistle that I can’t believe we didn’t name him that.  He is the star of Little Whistle by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Tim Bowers.  He lives in a toy shop which lives up to my expectations in that all the toys have active nighttime lives once the shades are drawn.  He is actually the only living creature in the store, but that’s ok-he can still play with the others.  He’s got all kinds of friends in the store-Lion who likes cookies, Bear who likes hats, Violet who sings, and Soldier who reads stories to the baby dolls. This is such a sweet and somewhat old-fashioned story. It’s one I’ve read aloud dozens of times since my kids were quite young, and I always liked the use of the phrase “quiet contentment” in it because I think it is a good description for the book itself.  Little Whistle has two other books-Little Whistle’s Medicine and Little Whistle’s Christmas.

Chico Bon Bon is quite the opposite of Little Whistle.  He is an extremely handy monkey with a toolbelt filled with all kinds of crazy tools with wacky names.  We first met Chico when we read not his first book, but Monkey with a Toolbelt and the Noisy Problem by Chris Monroe.  Chicolives in an amazing treehouse with tons of rooms in it, which you see when he has to go all over his house looking for the source of a terribly loud noise. Arooga Boom Clang! Clang! What could it be? He ultimately finds the improbably source of the problem-a large elephant stuck in the laundry chute. It takes all his most clever handy thinking to get him out.  Now, here’s the kicker for my family and why we had to immediately buy the book. The first time we read this and turned the page to see the elephant stuck in the chute it was a funny visual, but then we read the elphant’s speech bubble, “My name is Clark.” My son’s name is Clark and I can tell you it has never ever come up in any other book we’ve read. So there was much shrieking with laughter and disbelief.  But, even if your name is not Clark, you will still love this hilarious book.

For the record, we also love the name Chico Bon Bon so much that it’s our favorite character name and we named one of our Mii’s that.  Chico Bon Bon has a couple other books, and we also really like Monkey with a Toolbelt and the Seaside Shenanigans. In this one he goes to Clark’s uncle’s seaside resort where all kinds of shenanigans have been happening.  Chico has to figure out the clues and then use his wacky tools to solve the problem.  I guarantee once you read these books you will find yourself saying “Hand me that loosey lou, would you?” the next time you’re doing a home repair.

I’m not really sure what kind of animal/creature Polo is, but he’s definitely a favorite friend of ours. He appears in a series of small books: Polo and the Magician, Polo and Lily, Polo and the Magic Flute, Polo and the Dragon, and a couple of larger books-The Adventures of Polo and Polo The Runaway Book. (For some reason we own all the little ones, but not the big ones. Definitely worth adding to our home collection, though.) They are all by Regís Faller and are wordless panel style books (you will likely find them in your library’s comic book/graphic novel collection.) Polo lives in a treehouse on a little island. He has a little boat and a happy little life that seems to be filled with adventures. The pictures and overall feeling are absolutely charming.  There’s definitely quite a magical element to the stories, for example when he’s ice-bound in Polo and the Dragon he draws a door, goes through it, and finds himself in a warm tropical world. These stories are so much fun that we’ve read them over and over again.  In the bigger books it is fun to see the characters you have met along the way in the smaller books.  I feel like Polo is not super well known here, but he definitely deserves to be. And, because there is no text, these books can be read and enjoyed by a wide range of ages.