GUMBOOT'S CHOCOLATEY DAY
by Mick Inkpen & illustrated by Mick Inkpen
An ingenuous pig has a happy day eating a giant chocolate bar, bit by bit, and making friends with a little girl who trades half the bread she's feeding the ducks for his next-to-last piece. Then (tragedy!) he feeds the last bit to the ducks by mistake, but one of the ducks finds it and gives it back—only ``a little pondy.'' Like his sympathetically humorous, deftly phrased text, Inkpen's watercolor illustrations are guilelessly engaging. (Picture book. 4-7)