IRVING AND MUKTUK

The Pinkwaters are a hoot in all the best ways: odd but canny, droll but jazzy. Here they entertain readers with the cockamamie story of two polar bears trying to run a muffin swindle during a New Year’s celebration in the far-north town of Yellowtooth. The bears, Irving and Muktuk—“two polar bears who are no better than they should be”—are a couple of hard cases when it comes to blueberry muffins. They’ll run any scam to get their teeth into the goods at Yellowtooth’s Blueberry Muffin Festival. It’s Officer Bunny’s job to thwart the ursine bores, and the bears make it easy for him. One year they pose as two orphan penguins, until Officer bunny remembers that penguins are from the far south. Another year they impersonate Girl Scouts, but their uniforms are not regulation, so they get bagged. Still another year they pretend to be famous chefs from Bayonne, New Jersey, come to judge the muffins, but their jackets are way too tight and the real chefs are located on an ice floe. Officer Bunny has had enough: He puts out a notice on the Internet that two bears are available and gets a response from Bayonne, where the zoo would be happy to have them. And the town is the muffin capital of the world to boot. Lucky bears. What a pleasurably eccentric story, open to very theatrical readings, and what wry illustrations—a combination, like time and money, that works. (Picture book. 4-8)