Move Over, Alice! Imogene Comes Back! by David Small

Imogene woke up, wondering what the new day would bring.

And well she should! After all, she had once awakened with antlers and then with peacock feathers. Her family had tried to forget about those occasions. But... to the great amazement of her bony hound dog and a fishy look from her orange cat, the peculiarities have returned--Imogene has a very long neck, not unlike that of Alice in Wonderland, but with the spots and horns of a giraffe.

"What now?"

The family was stupefied. Imogene made the best of things. She retrieved her brother Norman's missing football from on top of the tall living room secretary. Going outside, she rescued a terrified kitten stuck in a tree.

"Hurrah!" cheered Lucy the maid.

"You should work for the fire department," said Mrs. Perkins, the cook.

But every day brings a new transformation for Imogene. The next day Imogene appears for breakfast with the head of an elephant. Her mother is aghast, but Mrs. Perkins puts her trunk to good use watering the flowers. Imogene really gets into her new job until she tries to water a flowering tree and soaks the next door neighbor, sunning and scrolling on her laptop! What will the neighbors think?

"I don't care what it is!" shouted her mother. "No child of mine will be a beast, a bird, or a bug!"

"Donate her to the zoo!" suggested Uncle Alphonse.

"ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!" Mother howled, fainting into a side chair.

Although Imogene seems unconcerned, everyone else in the household is in a tizzy! So the next morning, they all wait with bated breath, Norman with his fancy camera at the ready to photograph Imogene's transformation de jour. But Imogene presents herself well turned out, fully herself, nose and all, once more!

Uncle Alphonse, Father, Mother, Norman, Mrs. Perkins, and Lucy are relieved. Things are back to normal! But then... there's a ...

PING!

It seems that Imogene is not the only person in this household subject to sudden transformations, in Imogene Comes Back! (Alfred A. Knopf, 2020). After a break of only thirty-five years, Caldecott-winning artist David Small returns with an Imogene story just right for this year of odd and sudden transformations.

How Mother deals with her abruptly arriving moose antlers is an intriguing consideration for a new generation of Imogene fans. With his highly refined and subtle illustrations, Small has been the winner of the Caldecott Medal for So You Want to Be President?: The Revised and Updated Edition and the Caldecott Honor books, The Gardener and One Cool Friend, and it's great to see his modern-day Alice who takes her Through-the-Looking-Glass transmogrifications with equal aplomb. Says Publishers Weekly, "Small’s pen, ink, and watercolor drawings are as sly as ever, rendered in creamy tones befitting Imogene’s posh lifestyle and punctuated by sublime goofiness—and reminding readers that being able to roll with change is a useful part of transformation.