City Day

PreS-K–When summer ends and vacationing humans leave the forest, a few plucky animals decide they’re just not ready for the fun to stop. They head into the big city and wreak havoc until an animal control team arrives to round them up and return them safely to the wild. The comedy relies on farcical interspecies miscommunication; the woodland critters continually mistake the urbanites’ frightened reactions to their presence for playfulness. Cheerful digital illustrations highlight the amusing disconnect; the animals sport oblivious grins as the people flee in terror. While the humor will appeal to adults, its subtlety may well fly over children’s heads. Moreover, the irony in the text obscures the ostensible environmental message. In moments throughout the narrative, Brucker slyly compares the good-natured mayhem to humans’ destructive presence in nature, but the animals’ earnestly chipper tone makes it difficult to understand these arch asides as indicative of a serious problem. The flat-style graphic art, while successful in characterization, often gives short shrift to environment, with texture and details appearing as an afterthought.