Tuff Fluff: The Case of Duckie's Missing Brain

My daughter, who is 6 yrs old, really likes this fun detective story. This story is much different than many of the other picture books we own. I like the fact that it is a long story, being that age 6 she prefers this.

I don't know about you, pal, but I've always felt there never can be too many books, especially children's picture books, about hard-boiled toy rabbit shamuses who perform brain surgery on a stuffed duck. Turns out, and your jaw's going to hit the linoleum at the news, there really haven't been many books at all about hard-boiled toy rabbit shamuses, etc. etc. Darn few. Incandescently-gifted writer/designer/illustrator Scott Nash dives in to rectify this lamentable lacuna of literature with "Tuff Fluff: The Case of Duckie's Missing Brain" (just out in softcover). Mr. Nash has tickled the funny bone of countless wee bairns of nosepicker vintage with his marvelous illustrations, which grace dozens of fine picture books, including "Flat Stanley", "Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp", "Over The Moon", "The Bugliest Bug", and "Pickle and Penguin". "Tuff Fluff" is the first book in which Mr. Nash has unbuckled his giddy literary imagination and let fly a story of his own, a detective saga, one set in the sordid overbelly of Los Attic, where, if life is not exactly cheap, the storage is indisputably dusty. It's populated entirely by toys. Tuff Fluff is the shamus. He wears an eyepatch, a Tang-colored bow-tie as wide as his head, and, truth be told, nothing else. This may well be standard garb for stuffed gumpaws, and I'm willing to take Mr. Nash's word for it. Presumably, the stuffy humidity of Los Attic would deflect any sane shamus away from the regulation-issue detective trench coat and felt fedora....though the same could easily be said of California, and that didn't stop Bogart. He needed storage space for his roscoe, his cigarette papers, assorted dinguses, a red herring or two, and his pocket flask. T.F., who travels light, carries none of these. As our nocturnal yarn begins, Fluff's doing the crossword in his office, located "in the Ace Moving Box" in Los Attic ("The City That Always Sleeps"), when trouble knocks at the door. Need I tell you it's a dame? Trouble is Bluebell, a dead ringer for Lauren Bacall if Lauren Bacall were a turbo-plus-sized teddy bear "as big and blue as a whale in a room full of oranges". Bacall was way taller than Bogie, but you ain't never seen a height-differential like this. Bluebell may be big-boned, but she's plush---and she's plush in all the right places. Bluebell has a sidekick---a duck. Duckie, by name. Yellow, by hue. Peter Lorre eyes. And he's one wacko quacko, jacko. He's neither gunsel nor gosling, but he's lost his gift for gab. All he does now is quack. T.F. finds nothing amiss in this, but Bluebell bats her ursine baby-blues, and before you can say "teddy-whipped" Fluff takes on the case. He doesn't even bother to ask for a retainer. Silly rabbit. The ensuing action is, duh, action-packed. It's suspenseful, weird, hilarious, loud, and (toddler boys take note) at least one character gets bitten on the butt. Plenty of seedy, or at least raggedy, stuffed toys flush out the dramatis per

I bought this book for my daughter when she was a few months old. It is such a fun book to read aloud and the book has yet to bore me. I especially enjoy the layout with big, full page pictures. My daughter, now 2yrs, enjoys the colorful pictures and is interested enough to actually sit still for 3/4 of the book (rare for a two yr old!). I also applaud Nash's vivid descriptions ("she was as big and blue as a whale in a room full of oranges") and his use of "big words" (I use big in the sense that they are words less likely to be known for the particular age group)-- words like forlornly, swashbuckler, and ventured --they are carefully placed and expose my daughter to a broad vocabulary without making the book burdensome to read.

My first one isn't even born yet and my wife and I love this book. It is just an all around great children's book. The characters are marvelous. It has a lot of great twists.

What's not to love? There is a lot of text. A LOT of text. This might be the longest book my son and I have read together. But it keeps his attention every time. We've had it less than a week, and we're reading it once or twice a day.The only drawback is the (slight) violence, and Tuff Fluff's hard-boiled tone get's us, er, a little worked up. But Thor loves it.