Shaggy Dog Story: The Deep Deep Puddle by Mary Jessie Parker

THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT AND THE EARLY MORNING, THE RAIN FELL.

A PUDDLE...
A DEEP, DEEP PUDDLE SWELLS AND STRETCHES ACROSS THE CITY  STREET.

ONE SHAGGY DOG, SOGGY FROM THE RAIN,
WANDERS AND SNEEZES A LITTLE TOO CLOSE TO THE EDGE OF DEEP DEEP PUDDLE....

AND GLUB, GLUB, GLUB.... 

As the already waterlogged pooch sinks deeper and deeper, two curious stray cats approach to peer into the puddle, and...

You guessed it! Glub times two and the felines join the dog, sinking into the deep.

These three are soon joined by three thirsty squirrels, four pecking pigeons, and five schoolkids running to beat the late bell.  All sink together into the amazing puddle's depths.

Six tourists, tangled in their camera straps, stumble and trip into the watery wasteland, followed in turn by seven yellow taxis, and eight street vendors, with their pushcarts, vans, and tinkling ice cream trucks, take the plunge.  Next nine robbers on the lam with their bags of loot, looking backward for pursuers, step right into the puddle.  Down, down they sink,, greenbacks floating away from their grasping hands.  The tourists try to snap photos with their phones or cameras of the action, while the vendors reach to retrieve their floating wares, the dog dog-paddles after the squirrels and the cats do their best swimming strokes in pursuit of the pigeons.  It's a big muddle of a  puddle!

At last ten police, tracking the robbers, arrive to cordon off the puddle and eleven tank trucks arrive to drain the puddle with their twelve long suction hoses.  Away goes the water, and the police collar the malefactors, the vendors rearrange their wares, the tourists smooth their hairdos and straighten  their damp clothes, looking a bit foolish for themselves, while the cats, pigeons, and squirrels hurry to leave the scene of their dunking.  All's well that ends well, right?

Well, there's still that soaking-wet, soggy, shaggy dog.  And you know just what dogs do when they're wet....!

Mary Jessica Parker takes puddle jumping to new, er, depths in her new deluge dilemma, The Deep Deep Puddle (Dial Books, 2013).  There are plenty of Glub, Glub, Glubs  to go around in this unique counting book with an unsuspected but satisfying ending, but artist Deborah Zemke's clever and comic illustrations of a passel of city dwellers taking the plunge really take the puddle prize.  There is plenty of humorous action in that puddle for dedicated detail spotters in this silly and fantastical city story.