Books for Young People
Critter creators
PICTURE BOOKS
Animals want in on the action in these art-themed picture books
BY LINDA LUDKE
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Anonymouse
★ Anonymouse
Tundra Books, Ages 3–7
Vikki VanSickle and Anna Pirolli, ill.
Outside Art
Madeline Kloepper
Tundra Books, Ages 4–8
IN
Anonymouse, the latest picture book by Toronto author Vikki VanSickle, a mysterious rodent creates Banksy-esque street art to lift the spirits of his fellow city critters. The assuredly understated narration takes an off-the-beatenpath tour of urban art, from the dank depths of the sewer system where a rat’s modest hole in the wall is transformed with a spray-painted, frilly pink curtain facade, to a bat cave in an abandoned industrial warehouse that gets graffitied with a joke on the Caped Crusader. There’s a whimsical bull’s eye stencilled on a lamppost for peeing dogs; a trompe l’oeil mural of a fancy restaurant on the side of a dumpster for raccoons dining al fresco; and a tiny ant Atlas carrying the world on its shoulders sketched on the sidewalk gutter.