Review by Horn Book Review
Meet Pippo: a tiny rodent wearing a quilted cardigan and a neckerchief who spends his time clickety-clacking on a typewriter in his cozily appointed hollow tree. His days are orderly, his routines offer contentment, and his home decor is sumptuously illustrated. He sleeps easily, in striped pajamas and a matching sleep cap, until an ominous page-turn ushers in a truly strange twist in the protagonist's peaceful life. It begins with a purple-tentacled plant sprouting from the ceiling: creepy and a bit drippy, but mostly harmless. The next morning, all of Pippo's adorable cottage furniture becomes ambulatory and dances out the door. Then the forest trees, Pippo's home included, follow, leaving him frightened, confounded, and entirely bereft of his comforts. With jewel-toned, saturated watercolor, and loose, flowing compositions, Wen creates a timeless woodland atmosphere with a gently uncanny edge; the character's comically exaggerated, goggle-eyed reactions to each fresh indignity help keep the mood more silly than scary. Pippo soon locates the wreckage of his (still-ambulatory) home and begins to rebuild; resolution sneaks in as he pieces together the comforts of his former life while taking his unbelievable new experiences to the typewriter. Endearing and surprising, Pippo's story is an early lesson on finding meaning in life's inevitable, if occasionally eerie, changes. Jessica Tackett MacDonaldNovember/December 2025 p.58 (c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An unusual week disrupts a mole's peace. Pippo's world couldn't be comfier. Each day, he sips his tea and types up his stories; his is a life of routine. But one morning, he wakes to find tentacled purple plants dangling from his ceiling and leaking liquid, undeterred by his insistent pokes of disapproval. The next day, Pippo happens upon his previous inanimate belongings hightailing it away. Perhaps strangest of all, on the third morning, the stump that he calls home sprouts four creepily gnarled legs and sidles straight toward a nearby babbling brook. In a moment of ill-advised curiosity, Pippo opens the door and plunges straight into the water. He clambers atop his now-unmoored front door and drifts breathlessly downstream. Once safely ashore, he makes a serendipitous discovery--his home and its wares are sitting gleaming in a glen, largely immobile, functional, and only slightly worse for wear. Inspired by the week's whirlwind, Pippo plops down to write, settling into a routine but now much more open to the unknown. Cosmic horror for nervous kids, Wen's text dramatizes the departure from the predictable with an emotional reality that many anxious readers will recognize. Twee, vintage-feeling illustrations prove just spooky enough to emphasize how disconcerting change can be; the aesthetic complements the narrative's kookiness without straying far from Pippo's hygge ideal. Frequent onomatopoeia makes for an appealingly immersive storytime experience. An affirming adventure.(Picture book. 6-8) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
