James Marshall is famed for stories featuring a wide array of colorful creatures, from hippos and bears to foxes and pigs. In The Guest, we get a marvelously mismatched pair: a moose and a snail.
The moose, oddly enough, is gray, which isn't a color I imagine on a
moose. Not only is she gray, her antlers are gray, which threw me off so
much that I couldn't be sure of her species until I peeked at the
summary on the page containing publication information. However odd her
coloration, then, Mona is a moose, and one day her life changes
drastically when a tiny snail named Maurice with a gray body and pink
shell comes to call. Although they are vastly different in size, Mona
and Maurice enjoy one another's company so much that the snail sticks
around.
Marshall shows us several pages of Maurice trying to
take part in Mona's moosey activities. Mostly he manages remarkably
well, helping her to bake, answer the telephone, mow the lawn... But his
favorite job is playing hide and seek with her, a game at which he
certainly has the advantage. Yes, Mona and Maurice make a great pair.
But one day, Maurice simply isn't there for breakfast in the morning,
and Mona doesn't know what to do. Can her friend really be gone for
good?
The Guest is a cute story, if not quite as
laugh-aloud funny as many Marshall books. The silliness comes in with
the illustrations, which show just how ill-suited a tiny hand-less snail
is to the pursuits of a much larger creature. When compared with George and Martha,
Mona and Maurice are just a bit bland, but their tale of friendship,
with Marshall's distinct drawings and terse narrative style, is still
one worth reading.
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