Walter's Tail

Walter's Tail is a delightful book for elementary age children. My seven year old son thoroughly enjoyed the book.

The overall impression is soft shapes and luminous colors. Lisa Campbell Ernst draws her lines wiggly and her characters dumpling-cheeked, and she illuminates each page with colors that glow from beneath. The flyleaf explains that Ernst achieved this luminescent look by building layers of colors (with pastels), then adding lines with a quill pen. The result is a mixture of shine, shadow, and shimmy, giving a vibrant setting for this warm-hearted story about elderly Mrs. Tully and her growing dog, Walter. Walter is a cute puppy, adored for his winning personality and for a tail that "never stopped wagging." Ernst conveys this rapid wagging convincingly; she outlines the tail with motion lines resembling a fan-- or a propeller. However, as Walter grows, and grows, his big windmill-of-a-tail knocks over Mrs. Tully's vase, her jigsaw puzzle, and her "dainties." (Ya gotta have underwear in a kids' book.) Things are even worse ("a calamity") in town: "A barrel of lemon balls tumbled, turning the [candy shop] floor into a lemon-ball sea." "At the florist, flowers lost their petals, pots were smashed to smithereens." Walter also wags the model bride and groom right off of a wedding cake: "Tell tale signs of icing were discovered on Walter's tail, but the smiling couple was never found." (Yes, I looked, and was delighted to discover that the very observant audience can find the missing cake ornaments!). Ernst's humor and rhythmic words make this tale a great read-aloud book. In a wonderful display of faux melodrama, Ms. Ernst builds suspense by showing how the town turns on the once welcome dog: The inhabitants "shield their children," turn their stores' signs to "closed," and "ran the other way." The rejected Mrs. Tully and Walter retreat from their puppies-only friends, climbing a nearby hill. However, when Mrs. Tully gets her foot stuck, Walter alerts the town through his tail power. Meanwhile, the townspeople have already found their inner dog, as they slowly recognize that Tully and Walter belong (the former word italicized for emphasis) in town, tail-launched bottle of "Pansy Perfume" or not. While I would have liked a long distance view of Walter signaling the town from the hilltop, and a scene of the townspeople scrambling up the hill to rescue Mrs. Tully, these are minor points. Well-written, funny and exciting, there's also a nicely understated point about change and acceptance, and the illustrations are definitely worth wagging over.