HUNWICK’S EGG

Several disconnects between text and pictures sink this faintly bizarre tale of a solitary elder who adopts an understandably silent confidante. Introduced as a bandicoot on a spread where the only visible creature is a colorful lizard, Hunwick finds a big white egg after a storm. With some effort, he lugs it into his burrow—though in later scenes it’s still laying out on open ground—but despite his care and conversation it never hatches. The other creatures, Australian natives all, make sympathetic remarks, but Hunwick’s good cheer never falters, even after he comes to realize that his “friend” isn’t an egg, but a rock. Loft’s poorly reproduced, or perhaps deliberately indistinct, Down Under denizens make superficial impressions next to the expressive figures in Christopher Wormell’s similarly themed but more explicitly metaphoric The Big Ugly Monster and the Little Stone Rabbit (2004). A rare miss for Fox, but not really her fault. (Picture book. 6-8)