PETE & PICKLES

Out the window goes Pete the pig’s perfectly predictable routine one stormy night when Pickles, a free-spirited fugitive circus elephant, comes crashing in. As chronicled in Breathed’s customarily full-featured digital paintings, which mix his trademark cartoon look with softer edges from image to image, their relationship goes through its ups and downs—both figuratively and, as Pickles has a predilection for taking wild leaps and dives, literally—until a flood puts the two in deadly danger and they save each other’s lives. Both adventures and illustrations flirt with the surreal; Pickles’s escapades involve wildly imaginary journeys, and the two friends find themselves moving in and out of the paintings (a Hokusai wave, Homer’s Night Hawks) hung on Pete’s walls. Hardly a month goes by without at least one new illustrated tale about mismatched companions, but like (for instance) Christa Kempter’s Wally and Mae (9/08), this clash of personalities is enhanced in the art by an extreme size differential, and the result is a comically silly, warmly affirmative package. (Picture book. 6-8)