16 September 2013 MR. WUFFLES! by David Wiesner, Clarion, October 2013, 32p., ISBN: 978-0-618-75661-2 

"One sweet dream, pick up the bags, and get in the limousine

Soon, we'll be away from here,

Step on the gas and wipe that tear away"

-- Lennon/McCartney, "You Never Give Me Your Money"

After reading and repeatedly re-reading it over a few days, I've been thinking obsessively about MR. WUFFLES! by David Wiesner.  And what I've now decided is that MR. WUFFLES! is Wiesner's Abbey Road.  

Go do an online search for the best albums of 1969.  What a year!  There are a bunch of other albums for which I know every word.  They were recorded by musicians and bands I still listen to all the time.  But there is no way that I can point to any one of them and say that it is as good as Abbey Road, either when comparing them note-for-note and word-by-word or comparing them as a whole.

That's how amazing this book is.

MR. WUFFLES! is a mostly-wordless story named after a cat by that name.  Mr. Wuffles turns his nose up at all of his toys until he finds one he likes, but it actually isn't one of his toys.  It is a tiny spacecraft that belongs to some little green beings donned in robes who have unwittingly set down in Mr. Wuffles' domain, clearly don't have a AAA card, and are soon having a truly terrible time of things because the cat begins batting their little vessel around (with them being bashed about inside it) as if it were a catnip mouse.  Exiting their vessel, and narrowly escaping the claws of Mr. Wuffles, the beings find their way through a hole in the wall into a behind-the-wall civilization of insects.  The history chronicled in pictures on the wall speaks to the insects' intelligence.  They break bread with these creatures, pose for photos together, and eventually bridge their language barrier to devise a cooperative plan for escaping with the assistance of their new friends.

"Oh yeah, all right,

Are you gonna be in my dreams tonight?"

MR. WUFFLES! is by far the strongest book, in terms of plot and character, that Wiesner has created to date.  And the friendship theme is just so near and dear to my heart.  And I just can't stop looking at this thing over and over again.

Richie Partington, MLIS
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