HOT HOT HOT

Two woolly mammoths come up with a palliative for summer’s heat in this high-energy import. Weary of suffering through the short but intense Ice Age summer, Oscar and Arabella try several ineffective cooling strategies, then at last just give each other major haircuts. Their relief is so palpable that soon all the other furred and hairy creatures are lining up for trims of their own. Layton illustrates with wild, sketchy pen strokes over splashes of somewhat subdued color; the effect ranges from pleasantly messy, to frenetic in more crowded scenes. Happily, when winter comes again, the animals regain their pelts—except for the human figure who’s been capering about in the background all this time, naked bum and all. Layton caps this brief, breezy, faintly scandalous episode with the admission that there probably were no scissors, mirrors, or combs in the Ice Ages; he just made that part up. Shocking. (Picture book. 6-8)