That's Show Biz! Oh, Nuts! by Tammi Sauer

Cutesy, Blinky, and Bob lived in the zoo.

BUT... nobody paid any attention to them.

Day after day it was the same old thing.

OOH! Look at the tiger! WOW! Watch the elephant! COOL! Cheick out the Koala!

These three stripey-tailed arborial rodents are cheeky, in more ways than one. Cutesy and Blinky are frustrated exhibitionists, and come up with a variety of campaigns to make themselves the center of the zoo-goers' attention, but all of them fizzle. Finally comes the last straw!

BUT, when the sloth (zzzzZZZZZ) got groupies, they needed a plan.

Costumes? suggests Cutesy. Rock show? suggests Blinky. They swim laps faster than the piranhas, and outrace the cheetah. But all their ploys poop out. The zoo visitors keep oohing and ahing over the comatose camels and boring bears.

Then something happens. Bob, obese and mostly catatonic throughout all of his mates' attempt to steal the zoo animals' thunder, has an epiphany.

Then a miracle happened.

BOB had an idea!

"I got it," he says. And he shared the plan.

The three squeeze (not so easy for Bob) into an empty cage and morph into a zoo exhibit and find fame "Zoo Style." Behind bars, they're superstars! Local television anchors do remote spots, flashbulbs pop, and they are expecting a contract with Entertainment Now any day.

But in Tammi Sauer's latest comic romp, Oh, Nuts! (Bloomsbury, 2012), when the three modern-day Chip 'n' Dales get what they want, they don't want it. Like all jaded stars, they miss their privacy And there's another act, waiting in the wings, so to speak, The Pigeons, waiting to take over the spotlight. Dan Krall's silly cartoons are over the top in this wacky tale of menagerie mania found in this goofy giggle-getter.

Sauer's other books include Cowboy Camp
and Chicken Dance.