Bruno: Short Stories for Long Nights

PreS-Gr 1–Bracketed by a young bear’s trip to bed for the winter and waking up to spring are nine lightly rhyming tales of other animals and their minor adventures. Georgie, an elephant child, unable to find swim trunks to fit his wide behind, opts to go nude; Antonio, a tapir, picks his nose until he bloodies himself and is rewarded with a pet cone around his neck; Fifo, a frightened rabbit, gains courage from a magical herb that is actually only lettuce; Pia, a sleek little leopard, wants to wear flowers instead her black fur coat; and more. In the corner of each of Romanelli’s rhyming tales is Bruno, the would-be-slumbering bear, still wakefully listening to the stories and inserting himself into the hero or heroine’s role. A vegetarian crocodile, a patient tortoise, and a ballerina hippopotamus are among the other participants, in ebullient illustrations that lift the collection and make it ready for the bedtime shelves.