Histrionics is definitely the order of the day when the stolen flashlight Bobo the monkey (or, possibly, tarsier?) is playing with suddenly stops working. "Ooooh!" says Fifi the koala. "You're in . . . TROUBLE!" In wild panic, Bobo bounds across Gosier's blocky cartoon zoo scenes, proclaiming his culpability and begging the unresponsive other animals for help in ever larger, louder type. Fifi saunters along behind: "Bobo BROKE the zookeeper's flashlight. And I'm gonna tell!" Responding to Bobo's frantic pleas, she finally agrees not to. "But," she says, pointing out at viewers, "I can't promise that THEY won't tell." "Are you going to tell?" asks Bobo d collapses in despair: "YOU ARE??!!" Like the classic The Monster at the End of This Book, the episode banks on the schadenfreude of young audiences. Here, at least, the author turns the tables on the tattler by trotting in the zookeeper at the end to, with notable lack of drama, fix the flashlight with a fresh set of batteries. Now who's in trouble? Prime material for a melodramatic, over-the-top read-aloud.

There's trouble at the zoo!It begins when Bobo the monkey steals the zookeeper's flashlight. What a neat toy! "Click. Click!" It goes on and off…until it doesn't. Fifi the koala is certain that Bobo will be in trouble (as is Bobo). After all, Bobo broke the zookeeper's flashlight. He can't fix it (poking it with a screwdriver makes it worse), and no one will help him (not even his fellow simians). Will Fifi tell on him? Not if he trumpets her greatness! (He does.) Will readers tell on him? Bobo asks them. On no! Here comes the zookeeper! The kindly zookeeper, a white man, sees that the flashlight just needs new batteries…and pats Bobo on the head. (Readers attuned to the cultural debate surrounding the association of black people with monkeys may well wince at this sight.) Now it's Fifi who's in trouble. (At least according to Bobo.) Told entirely in pictures and dialogue callouts (mostly from Fifi and Bobo), the tale is a stitch. The expressive, exaggerated illustrations, often arrayed several vignettes to a page, might as well be a storyboard for an animated short. Neither characters' eyebrows seem to be anchored to their faces, often soaring well over their foreheads for extra expressiveness. With the right delivery, this will have listeners rolling on the floor.Hilarious hijinks at the zoo. (Picture book. 2-8)