The Gift

Mr. and Mrs. Goodparents sit in their Thinking Chair and ponder what to give their son Mikie for his birthday in the opening scene of this fairly obvious tale. Since the chair is ""kind of hard,"" after awhile they have ""three problems: A pain in their bottoms,/ A pain in their heads,/ And still not a single idea."" When they finally ask Mikie what he would like, he announces that he wants a ""very special present and I want it to be very... BIG!"" A fold-out page reveals his parents' translation of this request--""He wants an elephant!""--while Montserrat's thickly outlined, stylized cartoon shows Mikie swinging from the trunk of a blue pachyderm sporting two rings in one floppy ear. Subsequent pages fold out to illustrate the Goodparents' speculation on other gifts that might fit the bill, prompted by Mikie's descriptions (for a gift that makes him ""fly,"" they imagine a helicopter). In spots, the narrative may lose readers completely (e.g., when Mikie says he wants his gift ""to last a loooong time!!"" his parents surmise, ""He wants a day that lasts as long as his bowl of soup""). Funky fonts, silver ink and metallic pages give this volume a distinctive look, but the conclusion will satisfy grown-ups more than birthday boys and girls: when his parents give him an apologetic hug in lieu of a present, Mikie announces--with a smile and a wink of his eye, ""Just what I wanted!"" Ages 3-6. (Sept.)