Where's Walrus?

About this book

Bored with life at the zoo, an adventurous walrus escapes to the outside world. With the zookeeper in hot pursuit, Walrus cleverly tries on all sorts of hats to disguise himself. Will a yellow hardhat point to a new life as a construction worker? Or will a red swimming cap reveal his true talents? Follow the happy-go-lucky runaway as he hides amongst firefighters, businessmen, and even high-stepping dancers in this delightful wordless picture book.

Reviews

The Wall Street Journal January 2011 Elementary-school children relish the challenge of finding visual clues in picture books, hence the popularity of intricately designed puzzle series such as \u0022Spot Seven,\u0022 \u0022I Spy\u0022 and \u0022Where's Waldo?\u0022 Younger children enjoy the hunt too but, being smaller, generally need less complicated images on which to test their wits. Stephen Savage's picture book \u0022Where's Walrus?\u0022 (Scholastic, 32 pages, $16.99) is an especially funny and stylishly retro-looking option for this nursery-school crowd. In its clean, colorful pages, a walrus escapes from a pool at the zoo while his keeper snoozes. When the man eventually gives chase, the walrus eludes capture by cleverly blending into various city scenes. On the cover, for instance, we see him wearing a fedora, smiling tuskily at us from a diner counter, where he is getting a cup of coffee. He poses with mannequins in a shop window, lays bricks with a row of workmen, insinuates himself into a line of firemen and dances onstage in a string of showgirls. The keeper catches up just in time to see the walrus infiltrate a diving team and perform a somersaulting high-dive (which little children will enjoy tracing with their fingers). When the walrus wins both applause and a gold medal, the keeper conceives of a brilliant idea-think big pool and diving board-for keeping both the animal and zoo visitors happily entertained in the future.