Age 7-10
This love story, in which a weasel falls for a fish, has been made into a film by the producers of the Ice Age animations and, like those movies, it concerns feel-good relationships between anthropomorphic creatures. When romance blossoms between two weasels — Zeke and Wendy — at a woodland shindig, fellow weasel Bagley Brown plays matchmaker to the young couple. Bagley mostly lives apart from the other weasels, burdened by being the son of the local hero, a reputation that is hard to live up to. Until, that is, his doomed devotion to a beautiful fish in a nearby pond finds its expression in a heroic act that enlists the help of the rest of the woodland community, and everyone comes out of it enriched. Once you have swallowed the idea of jive-talking weasels in baseball caps, this resembles an old-fashioned tale of something like courtly love and, although it involves a good deal of dialogue, its descriptions of rural Long Island are the highlights. Beautiful type on glossy paper and atmospheric, soft-focus, pastoral illustrations make this an object to admire.

The Wainscott Weasel by Tor Seidler, illus Fred Marcelloni
Catnip £9.99

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