WALLACE AND GROMIT

Reminiscent of early Sesame Street titles for its mediocre writing and fuzzy, low quality illustrations, this house tour will not only be meaningless to readers unfamiliar with the Wallace and Gromit feature film and shorts, it’ll leave even confirmed fans struggling to make out what’s going on. Chatty commentary fills dialogue balloons as the bumbling window washer/inventor and his silent, thunderous-browed canine partner squire viewers from room to room, making oblique references to events in the films, extolling various nonworking Rube Goldberg-style inventions like the Bully Proof Vest and the Turbo Diner while trying to serve tea and (of course) cheese. Meanwhile, squads of mice contrive to nab every bit of the latter. The pictures, which are drawn rather than composed with the engaging claymation figures of the films, have a flat, scribbly look, and several times feature abrupt changes of scene or dissolves that cut across the middle—techniques that work on the screen but are visually confusing on the page. Stick with the DVDs. (Picture book. 7-9)