BONHOMME AND THE HUGE BEAST

As pictured, Emilie's squiggly friend Bonhomme falls somewhere between a blob of glup and Casper the friendly ghost. Emilie herself is sketched in a mode one step up from stick figures, and de Brunhoff's deliberately naive present tense narration similarly resembles what a kid herself might do — or an improvising grownup at her bedside. The subject and the structure follow suit for this is simply about how Emilie and Bonhomme tell each other pointless little ministories when Bonhomme sleeps over, and then how the two go off — by foot and then borne by an accommodating cloud — to a Seussy pink house on a mountain top where they meet their inventions: a silly, fringed purple saurian, a giant frog with a jam jar, and a stone horse who falls and breaks but is quickly put together again. That's all and though there's no telling what kind of matter-of-factly told nonsense preschoolers will take to, you won't miss another Babar if you pass this by.