Freymann and Elffers, who turned pumpkins into talking heads in Dr. Pompo's Nose, try coaxing emotion from a mushroom in this overproduced book. Once again, the collaborators manipulate fruits and vegetables to look like faces, photograph the results and create elaborate vegetarian tableaux. Gus is a fungusy fellow constructed by joining two mushrooms top-to-top, with one stem for a head and a split stem for legs. One day, he and Button (a mushroom-cap pet with a piggy stem-nose) find a bright-green sprout in their portobello village. To find the source of this colorful thing, they brave an all-artichoke forest, where they meet an astonished red pepper with black-eyed peas for eyes: " 'You crossed the wolfy woods?' gasped Belle. 'That is just incredible./ Either you are very brave, or you must be inedible.' " Many rhyming couplets later, the
quest ends in the city of Cornucopia, where onion domes rest atop parsnip foundations and pointy-nosed radishes drive cucumber cars. Freymann and Elffers do more slicing and peeling than in previous books, and Cornucopia's salady skyline is a witty foray into architecture. But the clumsily built Gus and Button don't convey personality through their natural curves and bumps, as the radishes and red pepper do. Despite its fresh ingredients, this volume looks artificial. All ages. (Nov.)
