Wilfred calls his moose Marcel. He taught Marcel all the rules of being Wilfred's pet. But Marcel mostly seems to do what he wants. One day someone else claims that Marcel is her moose. That can't be. "This moose belongs to me," says Wilfred. But does it?
I love Oliver Jeffers. I love his humor (both in writing and illustrating), his funny-looking characters without feet, and his stories. Marcel is good at "providing shelter from the rain," but not so good at "going whichever way Wilfred wants to go." When a woman claims it's her moose, Rodrigo (oh, the names!), we see that Marcel may not have loyalty so much as an affinity for food. Indeed, if you look carefully at Marcel, you might notice that he doesn't care about the people around him at all--he follows apples. Wilfred leaves in a huff, trips, gets tangled in string, and ends up lying on the forest floor, unable to go home. Fortunately, Marcel comes to rescue him...sort of, and Wilfred realizes that maybe "he'd never really owned the moose anyway."
The book is illustrated with "a mishmash of oil painting onto old linotype and painted landscapes," which makes for rich and varied landscapes paired with Jeffers's signature styled people and moose. Stick-legged Wilfred wears red suspenders and a bowtie, and sports one single curly cue of hair on his baloon-shaped head. The moose is equally absurd, with a giant head, short (though somewhat variable) body, stick legs, and long, sprawling antlers whose wingspan is double the length of his body. Some scenes are depicted on a stark white background, while others feature grand vistas and beautiful mountains. I'm adding it to the honorable mentions of the year.
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| Notice the tag hanging off his antlers with his name on it. |
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