The Whingdingdilly by Bill Peet

Today's remedy for reality is a children's book that I loved as a child and shared with my daughters.

I think it's important to add some childrens and young adult books here too as they are just as important as adult fiction and in some ways, more important.

If children are exposed to good stories with fun and interesting plots and three dimensional characters that they care about (and not just books made from their favorite movies or toys) that creates a reader. If they continue on and find great young adult stories, that can solidify a love of reading that will last well into adulthood and beyond.

This is the story of Scamp and Orvie. Scamp is a dog and Orvie is a boy. Scamp is sad. Scamp wants to be a horse because horses get so much attention. When Scamp tries prancing around like a fancy horse, Orvie teases him and Scamp decides to run away.

After ducking into the woods to get out of the heat, Scamp meets a little witch named Zilly. Zilly says she can turn Scamp into a horse, but offers to turn him instead into a Whingdingdilly, a marvelous amazing creature! Scamp barks "yes!" and suddenly he had a camel hump, back legs striped like a zebra, front legs, feet and ears like an elephant, a long neck like a giraffe's and reindeer antlers on top of his head!

Not knowing what to do, Scamp decides to head home and scares several creatures along the way with his unusual appearance. Once home, he find Orvis desperately looking for him, but how can Scamp actually reunite with his friend looking the way he does now?

Many exciting adventures occur before the end of the story... what will happen to Scamp now??

When I pulled out our copy of this book for this post (not my original childhood one - I purchased this copy used on ebay when my girls were little), I discovered that I had a signed copy! It's not signed to me or us, and I kept the name secret,  but it's still neat! Bill Peet wrote many great kids books (I'll likely share more of them eventually), so I'm thrilled to have a copy that he held and signed.

Bill Peet -1915 - 2002