Wed Wabbit

When younger sister Minnie is knocked down by a car as she chases after her favourite toy, elder sister Fidge, who has kicked Wed Wabbit into the road could never anticipate the crazy adventure that would result and that she would share with her perpetually anxious and ridiculously over-protected cousin Graham. Lissa Evans has said that the germ of the idea for the book came from wondering what a modern version of The Secret Garden might look like. And in this tale of another world of soft toys and icky picturebook characters called the Wibblies, there are indeed echoes of other classic children’s books. But ultimately this is madly, hilariously and gloriously Evans’s own invention. By the end of the tale, Graham does become more daring and independent, and Fidge, who has been deeply wounded by the death of her father, learns to hug again. But frankly this doesn’t matter too much. This is an adventure so inventive and full of comic characters and situations that it doesn’t need such worthy justification. Fidge and Graham enter the picturebook world of the Wibblies after falling down some stairs into the dark, they are joined there by two toys who have fallen with them and who make up their band of adventurers: a carrot on wheels who has had the role of Graham’s comfort blanket and a purple elephant who has both thespian and New Age tendencies. The Wibblies come in various colours with various characteristics, some useful, some irritating. They all talk in rhyme, which is itself irritating. The blues are doing the bidding of Wed Wabbit who has overthrown the King Wibblie and established a dictatorship and who, it transpires, is soaking up colour from the Wibblies world. The Greys are clever thinkers but their inability to act on any of their thoughts has led them to being imprisoned on the train that endlessly circles Wibblieland. The Greens are good at climbing trees and hiding but their propensity to shout all the time invariably gives them away. And so on. It is the task of the motley band of four to harness the Wibblies useful qualities and adapt to their not so useful ones and put the Wibblies world to rights. How they do it provides fun and laughter on nearly every page.