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Deedy, Carmen Agra

Wombat Said Come In

40 pp. | Peachtree/Quinlin | October, 2022 | Trade ISBN 978-1-68263-321-2 $18.99
(2) K-3 Illustrated by Brian Lies. As fire spreads above his burrow, a wombat opens his underground home to a series of Australian animals, including a wallaby, kookaburra, and platypus. Each visitor makes itself comfortable immediately and, with Wombat's care and attention, gets what it needs. ­"Kookaburra commandeered Wombat's favorite chair”; "Platypus padded away in Wombat's favorite slippers." ­Wombat's life is transformed for several days, and his once-peaceful home is especially disrupted by the antics of Sugar Glider. When the danger has passed and most of the animals head back to their dwellings, Wombat ­generously invites Sugar Glider, who has no home to go back to, to stay. Deedy's (Rita & Ralph's Rotten Day, rev. 5/20) effective use of repetition in structure and language ("Wombat said, 'Come in!' / Wombat said, 'Come in! / From smoke and wind and howling din'") reads like an ­Australian cousin to Brett's The Mitten. Lies's (Bats at the Beach et al; The Rough Patch) richly colored illustrations, featuring expressive anthropomorphized animals, ­display both the comfort and chaos of Wombat's home. He changes perspective from page to page so ­viewers are sometimes up close, sometimes peering down from above; the shifts successfully create the sense of ­disarray in Wombat's space. Educators will find multiple curricular connections for this tale of hospitality, climate, and displacement, but young readers will likely be most attracted to the humor in text and art and the personalities of the animal neighbors.
Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2022

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