Polly's Puffin

A large-format book with admirably clear type, telling more of a story than many of Sarah Garland's titles which are often episodic rather than narrative. She's caught a pleasant idea - the loss of a loved toy turned into a simple, but interesting, I-Spy. The toy puffin has dropped into the hood of a man's duffle-coat and he's left the café - where can he be? We follow the trail, often spotting him when the characters can't, until the happy ending. All right, it does rely on a whacking great coincidence at the end which might worry adult readers but, as Polly says, 'it was like magic, wasn't it?'. And which adult reader would deny magic in stories!