Awards

• Winner of Parents Choice Award (Fall) (1998-2007) (Silver) 2004

Overview

A mischievous boy slips away from his teacher during a field trip to a natural history museum and, after the museum closes, sees all of the people he knows transformed into animals.

Full Product Details

9780689867217

Table of Contents

Reviews

Commissioned to flesh out a storyline and create a spoken text for a New York City Ballet production set to the Saint-Saens piece, Lithgow offers a tale of a wayward schoolboy who escapes his teacher during a museum visit, falls asleep surrounded by stuffed exhibits in a closed gallery, and dreams of his classmates, neighbors, music teacher, librarian, mother, and great-aunt as animals. The author once again shows his knack for brisk doggerel- Oliver Pendleton Percy the Third / Was a mischievous imp of a lad. / The tricks that he played on Professor McByrd / Nearly drove the old schoolmaster mad. Kulikov catches the rollicking comic tone with floridly dressed, theatrically posed figures bearing animal-like heads on humanoid bodies, or vice versa, performing for an amused-looking lad in a rumpled school blazer. An attendant CD features actor Lithgow's animated reading, interspersed with musical passages from the production. Though not quite another Peter and the Wolf, this will give a much-performed orchestral piece a leg up with younger listeners-and it works at least as well on paper as it does on stage. (Picture book with CD. 7-9) (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

John Lithgow is the New York Times bestselling author of I Got Two Dogs; Mahalia Mouse Goes to College; Marsupial Sue Presents: The Runaway Pancake; I'm A Manatee; Micawber; Marsupial Sue; The Remarkable Farkle McBride; and Carnival of the Animals. An award-winning actor, he has starred on stage, film, and television. He performs concerts across the country and has recorded the CDs Farkle and Friends, Singin' in the Bathtub, and The Sunny Side of the Street. Visit John at JohnLithgow.com. Boris Kulikov, a former set and costume designer in St. Petersburg, Russia, was chosen as a Flying Start by Publishers Weekly. He has also illustrated Morris the Artist by Lore Segal, The Perfect Friend by Yelena Romanova, and Carnival of Animals by John Lithgow. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available