Madeline in London

Description

Pepito has moved to England. To help celebrate his birthday, Miss Clavel and the girls pay him a visit. When his mother won t let Pepito keep one of his birthday presents--a horse--Madeline is more than willing to help out.What on earth could make Miss Clavel, Madeline, and her 11 nameless classmates leave belle Paris for the tea-and-crumpeted, sometimes trumpeted city of London? A mission to cheer up the lonely, thin, increasingly despondent Pepito, son of the Spanish ambassador, who had to move away from his house next door to Madeline s in Paris. In their efforts to cheer him up, and for a birthday surprise, Miss Clavel and the girls buy him a retired horse. All is fine until the horse gallops off at the sound of the trumpet to take his place at the head of the queen s Life Guards (his occupation before retiring). As readers whoosh through busy London scenes, we forget the horse has had nothing to eat all day. Upon his return to Pepito s home, he eats everything in sight: "The gardener dropped his garden hose. / There wasn t a daisy or a rose. / All my work and all my care / For nought! Oh, this is hard to bear. " Meanwhile, as the horse is passed out from exhaustion and overeating, Pepito s mother says he has to go. And so Madeline and the others take the horse home with them to Paris, where "They brushed his teeth and gave him bread, / And covered him up / and put him to bed." Ludwig Bemelmans charms us again with the uniquely skewed logic and matter-of-fact madness of childhood that young readers will adore. (Ages 4 to 8) --Karin Snelson