HOW THE NOBBLE WAS FINALLY FOUND

Williams, a National Book Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, and Gammell, Caldecott winner and master of the sinuously surreal squiggle, deliver an overlong and overtwee tale. The Nobble has been around for thousands of years, “playing in the space between Wednesday and Thursday,” but alone and lonely. He heads away from what he knows (napping in the bottom of the number 8, playing in the “octagonal rooms in snowflakes”) to find himself in a city, which is full of shapes he does not have words for. A little girl recognizes him as similar to someone else she has seen and gets him to open a door (“What’s a door?” asks the Nobble at the end of this torturously forced interaction) to see…another Nobble, one that looks just like him. Off they go, and the little girl hears them laughing. Too many words tell this story, which is heavy with the subtext of childhood loneliness and difference. The illustrator uses his delicious transparent colors, lightening his dark splatters, shadows and tangles, to great effect, but they cannot save this effort. (Picture book. 7-10)