As he proved most recently with Seven Stories
, Briant is an accomplished and appealingly offbeat 2-D artist. But his other métier—naïf sculptured figures, which populated his debut Paper Parade
—comes to the fore once more for this well-meaning panda dad's day at the beach that isn't exactly a... well, day at the beach. It all starts innocently enough when Dad takes his children, Alice B. and Baxter, for just a "look" at the ocean. But the scene is so inviting that the panda kids beg their father to drive them home to get the stuff essential for maximum beach-going pleasure: first it's swimsuits, then goggles (a particularly striking underwater scene shows the pandas diving with origami-like fish), then a camera. After all, his kids argue—in a line that becomes the book's refrain (and may well have kids and parents alike laughing out loud)—"It'll only take half an hour." But after four trips home, Dad realizes that maybe what the kids really need is the best plaything of all: himself. Briant keeps the writing low-key ("Baxter and Alice B. swam underwater and looked at all the fish") and lets his clay-and-wire figures take center stage. Children will be instantly reminded of the bendy-figures that inhabit their toy boxes and savor how the 3-D scenes look like souped-up versions of their own shoebox dioramas. Most of all, they'll get a big chuckle at the wide-eyed, kids-just-want-to-have-fun cunning of this panda cub pair. Ages 3-up. (June)
