THE CURIOUS ADVENTURES OF THE ABANDONED TOYS

In a pair of cozy read-aloud tales, Doc, a worn plush bear discarded when his hospital’s Children’s Ward is spruced up, meets a quartet of like survivors in a dump, lends expert aid to reset a blackbird’s dislocated wing and later pitches in to get a lost toy bunny back to its distraught boy. Fellowes, an award-winning screenwriter, tells the tales in an adult voice, combining sophisticated language—overhearing talk of the renovation gives Doc “intimations of mortality”—with a matter-of-fact tone, adding touches of humor (the toys take rides around town by tying themselves to the radiator grills of garbage trucks) and giving each of the toys a simple but distinct personality. Schindler’s color and black-and-white scenes catch every detail with such exact delicacy that even piles of trash look fetching. Fellow author Shirley-Anne Lewis gets title-page credit for providing the “idea,” but this joins a long chain of similar adventures, from The Velveteen Rabbit to Emily Jenkins’s Toys Go Out (2006), illustrated by Paul Zelinsky. It should find a ready audience—of children, as well as parents—to cherish it. (Illustrated fiction. 8-10)