Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. 4-10)Ĭontinuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long ( The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. Pilkey (The Hallow-Wiener, 1995, etc.) may have created a throwback to a simpler time by presenting work as a desirable activity for children this book is a gentle salve for the instability in so much of modern life. When dawn comes it is a celebration, a daily miracle, and the whole book brightens its hue. The paper route interrupts his dream life, but also extends it: It gives him time to think about the big and little things in his day. The paperboy's story has a satisfying roundness, beginning and ending in the snug warmth of his bed. The paperboy is black and, in these paintings, looks a little like another solitary hero, Peter, in Ezra Jack Keats's The Snowy Day (1962).

The soft prose and starlit illustrations evoke the paperboy's suburban world, as he tiptoes past the bedroom doors of his sleeping family and bikes with his dog through the chilly predawn air. A quiet, solid mood piece with a quiet, solid protagonist, who becomes a hero simply by doing his job every day.

The paperboy pilkey