Pippo’s Perfectly Peculiar Days
by Lenny Wen; illus. by the author
Primary    Clarion/HarperCollins    48 pp.
10/25    9780063288959    $19.98

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.

From the November/December 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.