A Wonderful Year by Nick Bruel (review)

Bruel takes readers on a strange trip through the four seasons as experienced by a little girl, her talking cat, and her massive purple hippo Louise. In Part One, “Winter Wear,” she peeks out the door at an inviting wintry snowscape, but before she can go outside she is barraged with on- and offstage demands to don layers upon layers of outerwear. By the time she reaches the door, it’s already spring, so she climbs backwards out of her rigid snowsuit (“So long! See you next year!” she and the snowsuit say as they part company). In Part Two, “Spring Splendor,” she’s outside weaving a fantastical poem, but when she and her dog attempt to recruit her cat to join their imaginary play, he rebels, as every self-respecting cat would: “Cut it out! Stop Desist End Halt Cease Quit!” Summer (Part Three, “Summer Sidewalks”) is so hot the girl melts into the pavement and is saved by quick-witted Louise, who slurps her through a straw into a cup, puts her in the freezer, and retrieves her (now a block of ice) and thaws her again outside. Fall (Part Four, “Fall Foliage”) finds the girl in dialogue with a tree that is alarmed at the prospect of shedding its leaves, but she manages to restore its confidence in the cycle of nature. The absurdity is often amusing, especially in the personified inanimate objects (the can of beans has its own television show). The pacing is uneven (Spring in particular lags), though, and the mood shifts even beyond seasonal reason in the thoughtful but wordy autumnal section. Bruel combines comic book and picture-book layouts, rendering his heroine and her animal companions with a heavy solidity that plays comically against the airy-fairy unreality permeating her Everygirl experiences. Unfortunately, this also gives the figures’ movements a flatness, and the palette borders on garish. Books about the seasons are generally as predictable, well, as the seasons, but rely on Bad Kitty’s Bruel to elicit a chuckle or two.