This Is a Hospital, Not a Zoo!

August 1, 1998
PreS-Gr 1-This amusing story begins with a trumpeting delivery man loudly taking a package to Filbert MacFee, who is in the hospital. The boy is frustrated because he wants to go home and the nurses say he must stay a little longer. When the box arrives with magic animal crackers inside, he eats one and changes into a rhino when it is time for a shot. Nurse Beluga gives him one anyway. When Filbert is taken to X-ray, he is so cold that he changes into a penguin. Further appropriate transformations follow until kindly Doctor Kebob decides that his patient is homesick and just needs to be released. This story is competently written and the pen-and-ink and watercolor cartoons are amusing. Good solid entertainment.-Anne Parker, Milton Public Library, MA

March 1, 1998
Ages 5^-8. Filbert MacFee loves the magical animal crackers he receives as a gift in the hospital. They seem to come in particularly handy when it's time for Nurse Beluga and her staff to poke and prod: it's tough to treat a boy who has turned into a rhino, a penguin, or a giraffe. Karim's goofy, fantastical story has sweet charm despite its somewhat tangled plotting, and it is a great vehicle for Truesdell's funny, irresistible artwork, which pictures animals and humans alike leaping and cavorting across the pages. Not an essential purchase, but fun all the same. ((Reviewed March 1, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)

July 1, 1998
Young Filbert MacFee is sick of being in the hospital, so he eats some magic animal crackers. He changes into different animals at will to avoid shots, medicine, and other hospital discomforts. After a lot of monkey business, kindly Dr. Kebob diagnoses Filbert's real affliction--homesickness. Although overly long, the outlandish story and cartoon illustrations make this an entertaining read.

(Copyright 1998 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)