Poppy's Pants

Conroy, a textile artist and the daughter of Pat Conroy—he contributes an afterword—makes her authorial debut with an extremely slight domestic comedy starring her line of WoOberry handmade dolls. Her heroine, an aspiring seamstress with the eccentrically capitalized name of pEnelope, is charged by her father, pOppy (who “spends many hours at his desk writing something”), to mend his pants; the story wanders here and there as pEnelope muses upon which color of thread to choose and how best to mend the hole. The dolls, photographed in whimsical hand-drawn and collaged environments, have a sweet, toys-come-to-life appeal, and their apple dumpling faces are surprisingly expressive. When pEnelope's frustration with sewing becomes a full-fledged rage, her sharply angled eyebrows, stitched frown and flying pigtails telegraph fury (“pEnelope throws the pants on the ground and jumps up and down on them. She feels better”). But the story, which seems to be about patience, persistence and thinking creatively, feels even woollier than the characters' fabrication. Ages 3–7. (Sept.)