LAND OF MISLAID

A missing peppermint sends a young girl and her grandfather on a journey to where missing things go in a strikingly illustrated but too-thin story.

When Hannah asks her grandfather if he’s seen her missing candy in the family living room, he offers her a piece of licorice, as he has eaten the peppermint himself. Rather than confessing, Grandpa spins a tale of the Land of Mislaid, where lost objects go. Using items from the living room, such as teapots, a clock, and a salt-and-pepper set, Grandpa leads Hannah through outsized fantasies on the way to finding the missing candy. While the settings are fanciful, such as the “Twilight Peninsula, where lamps sparkled in the night,” character development seems to have been mislaid. Hannah and her grandfather have no personalities to speak of beyond the obvious (she is young and curious; he is willing to go to great lengths to entertain his granddaughter). Only the exaggerated visuals—giant heads and bodies with tiny limbs—give them life. The illustrations, convincing, animated miniworlds of gigantic fish and table-salty seas, are the primary reason to read the story, which presents so much text on most pages that whole paragraphs scroll right off the bottom of the screen.

In the end, Hannah gives in to her grandfather’s elaborate, made-up story and accepts the licorice. Perhaps she was just tired of hearing his drawn-out story.