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RUSSELL AND THE LOST TREASURE by Rob Scotton

RUSSELL AND THE LOST TREASURE

by Rob Scotton & illustrated by Rob Scotton

Pub Date: May 1st, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-059851-4
Publisher: HarperCollins

The woolly with the big personality and the extremely long nightcap (Russell the Sheep, 2005) finds a buried chest filled with—well, not the “treasure” he’s expecting. Inspired by a glimpse of the tattered map in a passing crow’s mouth, Russell sets to in his lab (doesn’t every sheep have one?), constructs a treasure detector that resembles a robotic hockey stick and unearths a trunk. Though all he finds inside is miscellaneous junk, his disappointment doesn’t last long; picking up a ratty old flash camera, he’s soon happily taking snaps of his flock, friends and everything else. Scotton’s scenes of popeyed livestock mugging for the camera capture the profound flakiness of the entire episode, and the final view of an ovine audience poring over the resulting photo album will have young viewers agreeing with Russell that he has found “The best treasure ever.” Place this take on the value of family pictures alongside the similarly themed likes of Amy Hest’s Guess Who, Baby Duck (2004) and Deborah Blumenthal’s Aunt Claire’s Yellow Beehive Hair, illus by Mary GrandPré (2001). (Picture book. 6-8)