Tick-Tock - Softcover

The author and illustrator of No Problem team up again for this frenetic, captivating story. Skip Squirrel's mother leaves the family treehouse with a firm warning: "No jumping on the chairs! Something might get broken." But Skip can't resist a few playful bounces on the seat-cushions when her gray squirrel friend, Brainy, comes to visit. As Skip flies through the air at precisely 1:15 p.m., she collides with her mother's cherished cuckoo clock and knocks it off the wall; she and Brainy have until mother squirrel's scheduled 4 p.m. return to fix it. Hefting the unwieldly timepiece, the squirrelly duo dashes to enlist the help of, variously, bicycle mechanic Weasel, shoemaker Hedgehog and gadget-repairer Owl. Parkins's expressive, manic illustrations are the main attractions here, lending high anxiety to Browne's rather familiar tale of a race against time and giving budding clock-watchers extra incentive to chart the progress of the hands of the pictured clocks. His goggle-eyed squirrels, drawn in staccato penstrokes, have a nervous energy befitting their breed, and each eventful spread is watercolored in subtle, foresty earth tones. Even the clock bears a carved likeness of a squirrel that registers goofy grins and frowns depending on the nonstop action. A winsome tale. Ages 3-up.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

By the team that created No Problem, another funny story hinging on how to make a mechanical contrivance work. With one last caution--``no jumping on the chairs!''--Mom Squirrel is off. She's no sooner gone than Skip's friend Brainy leaps in and the two bounce into Mom's favorite cuckoo clock, breaking it. Rushing it through the woods (as detailed in a frieze across the bottom of the pages), they take it to Weasel's bike repair shop. ``A puncture,'' is Weasel's diagnosis, but neither the patches she glues on nor the air she pumps in helps. Nor do the soles Hedgehog applies to the clock at her shoe emporium. Owl, who does know about clocks, gets the pair home before Mom--but when the clock strikes, the cuckoo says ``whooooo.'' Snappy dialogue and the incongruous prescriptions for the ailing clock propel the classic three-part plot while Parkins conjures up a crowd of intriguing details with agile, busy pen lines resembling Ronald Searle's. Good comic fun. (Picture book. 4-8) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.