UMBRELLA

Park denizens find magic in an umbrella.

Clara, a young girl with messy, dark hair, is in an almost-perfect park, but there’s no one for her to play with. She picks up a long black umbrella lying on the ground. It looks old and worn, but it turns out to be magical. It thanks Clara for her kindness and encourages her to look inside it, because “anything is possible.” Opening the umbrella, Clara is rewarded with a cat to play with. Then the umbrella continues to give; an old man in a wheelchair gets an elephant friend to help him pick apples, and fussy toddlers are distracted by a band of butterflies. Watching all this, however, is Mr Fox, an anthropomorphic canine in a natty suit, who commands the umbrella to make him “rich, rich, rich!” He is summarily drenched by a localized rainstorm and gives the umbrella back so everyone can enjoy its freely given bounty. This old-fashioned story is wooden at times, while the loose, blue-and-gray-toned illustrations give it a grave, somber feel. “Anything is possible” repeats throughout, though it’s less clear what is possible if one doesn’t have a supernatural talking umbrella. Characters’ skin tones tend to change from page to page, depending on light and shading.

Imaginative but limited.