SLEEPY PENDOODLE

Chock full of warm sentiment and playful language, this charmer will draw smiles from even the most stonehearted. A child finds an abandoned puppy, so new that its eyes aren’t yet open. When she asks her uncle what to do, he advises her to stroke it and say, “Open your eyes, Sleepy Pendoodle.” Those instructions get transmogrified, thanks to several distractions on the way home, but after several increasingly silly tries (“Open your eyes, Sloppy Popwaddle! Open your eyes, you pup!”), she’s successful at last—“And now,” she concludes happily, “he’s a big red dog.” Placed on the pages with almost no background detail, Vivas’s figures dance about each other, the spiky-haired child and her fuzzy, golden pup both pictures of happy exuberance. Parents will be irresistibly tempted to share this with their own Peepy Splendiddles—er, Penduddles. (Picture book. 3-6)