In her first children's book, interior designer Phillips (French by Design
) introduces a character who seems at first to have much in common with other exuberant cosmopolitan picture-book youngsters. Emily and her blonde guardian, Madame DuBois, live in a sumptuous New Orleans apartment, wear fabulous clothes and eat delicacies at famous restaurants. But Emily is a monkey, and she can't help getting up to monkey business. One terrible day she flushes Madame DuBois's glasses down the toilet. Here Phillips gives her fluffy characters a bracing dose of reality. Madame DuBois realizes Emily needs to be with other monkeys and brings her to the zoo. Courteous zoo officials prevent the anguished Madame DuBois from taking Emily home again when the monkey has trouble adapting ("Wild animals do not make good house pets. That is one reason we have so many monkeys here," one says firmly). Only after Emily has fully adapted to the zoo do the officials relent, but by then Madame DuBois realizes that her beloved monkey is happiest in the zoo. Debut artist Watts's swoopy retro ink sketches are right off the sides of department-store shopping bags. She pictures Madame DuBois in a parade of Chanel suits and matching half-glasses (she modeled the character, she says, on Carrie Donovan), and she uses horizontal and vertical gatefolds to do justice to Emily's monkeyshines. The drawings are just right for the fantasy-like elements, and their madcap tone softens the realistic second half. Ages 4-8. (Oct.)
