The rhyming, cumulative text begins, "Here is the [parrot] that stretched/ and squawked / that woke the [tiger] that growled and stalked." The book substitutes a jovial little picture of an animal for each bracketed word, making this a rebus and offering playful practice for children who can't quite read yet. Here's the unspoken premise that emerges in the illustrations: the zoo animals sleep each night in their apartments in the city. It's five in the morning when they begin to wake up one another. One by one, they climb aboard a city bus and ride to their day jobs. They disembark and trundle off to their areas, where they look as sleepy as zoo critters often do. Now we know why! Arnold's playful line-and-wash drawings, textured with his signature squiggles, will amuse children on every page. Even parents will smile at the bus-riding chicken absorbed in reading the Stock Market News. Good fun.
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