Stinky Cecil in Operation Pond Rescue by Paige Braddock

Peas occupy the next row, and the pest gobbles them up, too. The duck is frantic that turnips are next, but instead the pest eats the sheep’s favorite crop: corn. Colored illustrations not seen.īufo buffoonery for fans of the Holms’ Squish series and like early graphics.Ī turnip-loving duck and its friends defend their garden.Īlas, the duck, sheep, dog, and donkey immediately discover the eponymous pest in the garden when it (a groundhog?) eats a row of beans.

A pair of miniepisodes and assorted worm and Bufo americanus facts cap this wry eco-fable. Just as all seems lost, two human biologists recognize another buddy, RayRay, as a rare “Jollyville Plateau salamander,” and the pond is saved. Braddock’s experience illustrating A Charlie Brown Valentine (2002) and other post-Schulz Peanuts productions stands her in good stead here, as she presents in big cartoon panels a cast of neatly drawn creatures whose pithy commentary (the insectivorous Cecil, on his friendship with Reggie the fly: “Ours is a complex relationship”) is more sophisticated than their pratfalls and other broad antics. No dice-“Catch you later,” the raptor sneers meaningfully as it flies off. Nothing if not nervy, Cecil even enlists the hawk to help by dropping rocks. Alas, it turns out to be not so easy for small creatures to stop giant bulldozers.

Once safely back in the water, he calls together several pondside buddies including Jeremy the earthworm and Jeff, a “free-range hamster,” to brainstorm solutions to the crisis. Stopping a highway project that threatens his pond is going to take more than Cecil the toad’s ability to “toot.”Ĭecil discovers the danger thanks to a short flight in the talons of a predatory but, fortunately, olfactorily sensitive hawk.

Stinky Cecil in Operation Pond Rescue by Paige Braddock