Once Upon a Weasel

An adult narrator looks back at his adventures with his childhood pet weasel in this energetic but aimless story. Living with his parents above their hat shop, the unnamed boy had few friends “but I did dream a lot,” he explains. Passing a local pet store, the boy is instantly drawn to a weasel: “He had big eyes, soft orange fur and a playful nature.” The boy sneaks the weasel home and hides it from his parents, but after he brings the weasel on a field trip to a planetarium, chaos ensues, jeopardizing his chances of keeping the pet. Leonard’s fresh, cinematic cartooning has fun with the story’s flights of fancy, including the boy’s imagined moon journey with the weasel and the animal’s wildly circuitous path through the museum, traced in a zigzagging dotted line. But Lavis and Munn never give the story much substance or tension. Pacing is uneven, including a second imagined trip into space that’s done in a flash. The lesson the boy learns about responsibility is barely touched on, and the retrospective narrative frame only serves to distance readers from the boy’s experience. Ages 4–8. (BookLife)