My Best Sweet Potato

The plot may be familiar-when a girl loses her favorite stuffed toy, she cries bitterly until a stranger returns it and becomes her new friend-but the setting bubbles over with whimsical curiosities rendered in soft pastel watercolor and pencil. Dohaney's (Tinka) gentle fantasy world bears just enough resemblance to ordinary life to keep readers comfortable, and contains just enough visual oddities to make the story interesting. K's crayon drawings of imaginary creatures adorn her bedroom walls, and while children will recognize the everyday kitchen fixtures, K's space-age clothing, and trees with cotton-candy leaves seem otherworldly. The basket-like nests of the weaverbird (who returns the beloved stuffed toy to K) resembles Dr. Seuss or science fiction characters. Woolyman is a featureless sort of Teddy bear with large stitches and a chord that, when pulled, says things like, ""You're my best... Sweet Potato."" K's loneliness in the toy's absence is so palpable it seems to linger like an aura around the spot illustrations of the girl's search. The exchange between Mac the weaverbird and the stuffed Woolyman unfolds as a series of humorous misunderstandings, but it unfortunately detracts from the main story of K losing, then finding, her beloved toy. The focus on the faceless Woolyman rather than on K herself, is less successful than Mo Willems's treatment of a similar topic in Knuffle Bunny. Ages 3-7.