How are they going to “fix selves” on time? Soon a hippopotamus and peacock are staring bug-eyed at a returning pair of astonished hands. But the sound of approaching footsteps panics the pair of Picassos. After all, the opportunity to become a “pig-e-phant” doesn’t come around every day. An ear pulled here and an extra eye placed there, and before you can shake a carving stick, a spurt of frenetic self-exploration-expressed as a tangled black scribble-reveals a succession of smug hybrid beasts. The owl is pleased, but the wolf convinces it that the best is yet to come. The hands disappear, leaving the friends to their own devices. A pair of hands descends, and soon, amid a flurry of squishing and prodding and poking and sculpting, a handsome gray wolf and a stately brown owl emerge. The gray anticipates an adventure, while the brown appears apprehensive. Reinvention is the name of the game for two blobs of clay.Ī blue-eyed gray blob and a brown-eyed brown blob sit side by side, unsure as to what’s going to happen next. Henkes’ characteristically meticulous vignettes both expand the story and provide picture clues to help new readers along. Goodwin and walks home, imagining herself beside a sea as blue as her new marble. Goodwin purposefully put the marble on her lawn in the hope that someone would find it and take it home as a little treasure.

Goodwin be angry that she took the marble? As it turns out, Mrs. Hoping to make a quick getaway after surreptitiously replacing it, Penny is worried when her neighbor approaches. She can’t bring herself to tell her concerned parents what is bothering her, and after a fitful night’s sleep, she goes for another walk to return the marble. Later, Penny’s conscience bothers her, and the marble hidden in her drawer adopts a presence akin to Poe’s telltale heart. Though unsure whether she should do so, Penny pockets the glinting little orb and scurries home. Goodwin’s house,” and when she arrives there, she spies a shiny blue marble at the edge of the lawn. She heeds Mama’s admonition that she “nly go as far as Mrs. The story begins with Penny taking a walk and pushing her beloved doll, Rose, in a stroller. In this third early reader about a little anthropomorphic mouse named Penny, Henkes continues to plumb the emotional world of childhood as few author/illustrators can.

Penny and her doll book