HERR MINKEPATT AND HIS FRIENDS

Herr Minkepatt is a retired Superintendent of Bird-Feeding Stations; his friends are birds. It's hard to imagine children, taking much interest in these characters or in their plight as Herr Minkepatt is scorned by his neighbors for the bird calls he plays on the piano and as he runs short on his bird-feed allowance. But all ends well when he manages to attract a lost canary and is reinstated in his neighbors' favor and well rewarded. The pictures are by the same Polish illustrator of The Crane With One Leg (1965, p. 54, J-18) and are strikingly designed and executed with a combination of frail ink lines, water colors and finger paints.