AUGUSTUS AND HIS SMILE

Arresting art props up sketchy, uninspired writing in this tale of a tiger who sets out in search of his lost smile. Feeling sad, Augustus stretches and pads off, encountering a beetle and birds, fish, frost, mountains, shadows, desert, rain and, finally, a puddle in which he sees that his smile has returned—which brings him to the twin realizations that “his smile would be there whenever he was happy,” and that “happiness was everywhere around him.” Throwing down black paint for the stripes and filling in the body and square-nosed face with vigorously applied ink and color, Rayner creates a tiger every bit as powerfully impressive as the one in Marcia Brown’s Caldecott Medal–winning Once a Mouse (1961). In a subtle touch that observant young readers will pick up long before Augustus himself does, he actually restores his smile almost immediately. Too bad the story isn’t quite as strong as the visuals. (Picture book. 5-7)