Gustav Is Missing!
A Tale of Friendship and Bravery
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From the author of Sweety comes a heartwarming story of friendship and bravery, featuring a little mushroom who sets off into the scary world to find his missing pet slug.
Oh, no! When mushroom boy Little Cap's pet slug, Gustav, goes missing, Little Cap is beside himself. How can he summon the courage to leave his cozy home to find him? But summon he does. There are many suspicious characters just outside his door and--gasp!--he has to talk to his neighbors, but Little Cap can't be stopped.
After much perilous searching--up sheer cliffs and into deep canyons and even stepping in something really, really gross--Little Cap finally finds his very best friend, and he's changed for the better along the way. Here is a story that celebrates friendship, perseverance, and bravery, told with Andrea Zuill's signature heart and humor.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shown wearing overalls and big spectacles, Little Cap is an adorably grave-looking red-capped mushroom who believes that the outside world is "chaos." Emotionally honest vignettes show him knocked flat by cries of "SURPRISE!" and distrustful of various anthropomorphized animals and vegetables. The one place where Little Cap feels safe is the snug, cozily appointed cottage he shares with pet slug Gustav. But when Gustav nudges past the front gate and disappears, Little Cap must go forth to find him. Slowly, the protagonist gathers a critical mass of helpers, and what he perceives as a physically challenging landscape yields to a little grit and bravery. Back home with Gustav (revealed by a fellow slug as snoozing on a rock), Little Cap feels more open and connected, becoming something of a raconteur and embracing new adventures. Elegant, digitally colored ink illustrations from Zuill (Donut) provide plenty of quirky details while remaining deeply sympathetic to the story's offbeat protagonist, which makes his newfound, internally identified confidence endearing and inspiring. Ages 4–8.
