THE SMALL WORLD OF BINKY BRAVERMAN

A country boy forced to stay with smothering city relatives finds some surprising allies in this imaginative, if sketchy, reminiscence. An old man finds a bundle of clothes in his aunt’s now-empty house, and recalls a summer he spent there 65 years ago. Instead of enjoying his beloved swamp, Binky finds himself with a new haircut and itchy new clothes, doing arithmetic problems at the behest of his accountant uncle, and playing cards with an enforced new “friend” who cheats. But loneliness changes to glee when he’s greeted one night by the banjo player on a box of matches and other figures from labels on household products, all of whom come to life. Better yet, Binky becomes a whiz at math and rummy, thanks to his diminutive new allies. Depicting figures with typically lapidary precision, Egielski sets Binky’s wide-eyed face like a huge moon over a coterie of tiny emblems, each rendered in a distinctive style and color. Wells leaves big narrative gaps that give the tale a herky-jerky pacing, but readers will get the gist, and may regard the labels around them with new eyes. (Picture book. 7-9)