PIPPO’S PERFECTLY PECULIAR DAYS

An unusual week disrupts a mole’s peace.

Pippo’s world couldn’t be comfier. Each day, he sips his tea and types up his stories; his is a life of routine. But one morning, he wakes to find tentacled purple plants dangling from his ceiling and leaking liquid, undeterred by his insistent pokes of disapproval. The next day, Pippo happens upon his previous inanimate belongings hightailing it away. Perhaps strangest of all, on the third morning, the stump that he calls home sprouts four creepily gnarled legs and sidles straight toward a nearby babbling brook. In a moment of ill-advised curiosity, Pippo opens the door and plunges straight into the water. He clambers atop his now-unmoored front door and drifts breathlessly downstream. Once safely ashore, he makes a serendipitous discovery—his home and its wares are sitting gleaming in a glen, largely immobile, functional, and only slightly worse for wear. Inspired by the week’s whirlwind, Pippo plops down to write, settling into a routine but now much more open to the unknown. Cosmic horror for nervous kids, Wen’s text dramatizes the departure from the predictable with an emotional reality that many anxious readers will recognize. Twee, vintage-feeling illustrations prove just spooky enough to emphasize how disconcerting change can be; the aesthetic complements the narrative’s kookiness without straying far from Pippo’s hygge ideal. Frequent onomatopoeia makes for an appealingly immersive storytime experience.

An affirming adventure.