HOW TO WASH A WOOLLY MAMMOTH

Step-by-step advice for tackling the task of mammoth hygiene.

Moving to a very different pachyderm from the one in her previous title, What to Do If an Elephant Stands on Your Foot, illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds (2012), Robinson instructs readers in the best ways to give your average everyday mammoth a bath. Taking cues from instructional guides, Hindley depicts diagrams of properly filled baths, figures that show how to get one’s mammoth into the bathtub and even an array of possible soapy hairstyles. A misstep involving soap and large eyes leads to a very dirty mammoth escapee. So dirty, in fact, that the raincoat-clad heroine ends up taking a bath with him, much to the mutual contentment of the two. The art lifts what might otherwise have been an average outing with a delightfully expressive mammoth (he may not speak a word, but his eyebrows alone convey volumes). Lined ledger paper stands in perfectly for bathroom tiles, and even the rubber ducky is an interesting character to follow.

With its combination of understated text and witty art, this book will leave most readers hankering (read: begging, pleading) for a prehistoric pet of their very own.