IMOGENE COMES BACK!

Imogene has many peculiarities, but she carries them with great aplomb.

She has a long history of growing, albeit temporarily, animal appendages. Her most famous animal accouterments were a huge rack of antlers and a lovely display of peacock feathers, as seen in Imogene’s Antlers (1985). She is a curious child, always eager to see what the day brings, perhaps more antlers or something new and different. When she wakes up with a giraffe’s long neck and horns, her family is “stupefied,” but she is delighted. In fact, she uses her new height to find her brother’s football and helps her neighbor’s kitten down from a tree. Another day she sports an elephant head and trunk, happily helping one of the servants water flowers. When she flies about on her butterfly wings, her mother reacts in anger and embarrassment to her daughter’s multiple transformations. Imogene relishes her uniqueness and uses it wisely and kindly. When Imogene returns to her normal self, everyone is ecstatic. But then something amazing and totally unexpected happens. Small has great fun resurrecting this iconic character. Sharp-eyed readers will notice toy animals that influence Imogene’s appearance. She and her family and neighbors present White and have a privileged status. Oddly, even though the cook and the kitchen maid have the same names as the White-appearing characters in the first book, here in at least one illustration they appear to be people of color, though the brownness of their skin varies from page to page—an unnecessary and off-putting change.