TWO PEAS IN A POD

Marvin’s best bud, Violet, calls him “Marvellous,” has a jumping castle in her yard and a train that goes to “TOOWOOMBA, KATOOMBA, WOOLLOOMOOLOO, DIMBOOLA, NUNDROO, KALGOORLIE, BROOME WOOP WOOP” and sees "cottonwool castles and marshmallow kingdoms in the clouds." All Marvin sees are cauliflowers. So when Violet and her family pack up and move far away (“to the moon,” she says), Marvin is truly bummed. But then, when it's “just about the end of winter and I had almost put Violet in with the forgets,” his mother presents him with a suitcase and a plane ticket, and off he flies to a glorious reunion. McKimmie artfully tracks Marvin’s emotional landscape in sketchy, messy illustrations that play exuberant spatters of watercolor and scrawls of ink against cool, pensive Impressionistic scenes laid down with long brush strokes. The visit ends, as it must, but now in the clouds Marvin sees “sailing ships, woolly elephants, marshmallow dinosaurs, ice-cream pillows and…” “OK,” says Violet. And it is. Set very much Down Under. (Picture book. 6-8)