Louis & the Dodo

Louis, who loves birds, learns that the last living dodo is trapped by a circus and forced to perform dangerous tricks, so he sets out to save the bird and return it to its home, earning an exciting reward from the rest of his feathered friends.

PreS–This fantasy about a little boy who saves a dodo suffers from awkward writing and a lack of transitions. Louis doesn't have many human friends, but he is friends with the birds, so when they discover that a dodo is being kept captive in a circus, they enlist the boy's aid to release it, and the two take a balloon to a secret island where the dodos live. There is a special door that leads back to Louis's bedroom, which he uses to return home and then to visit the island every night. The colorful illustrations are interesting, with squat Louis in a green bird suit and lots of clearly recognizable creatures. The clowns in the circus scenes are appropriately creepy; the use of dark and light is effective, and the sketches of Louis and his house on the endpapers are wonderful. However, the story has an abrupt beginning, stilted writing, and a lack of internal logic. For a better fantasy of a child finding a magical place, there is always Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (HarperCollins, 1988), and stories of children rescuing an underdog abound.–Amy Lilien-Harper, The Ferguson Library, Stamford, CT
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