Title: When a Moose Has a Mustache
Author/Illustrator: Sam Caldwell
Format: Board book with fold outs
Target Age: Baby to Four
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
Review Author: Keith Dorwick
When a Moose Has a Mustache is a fun and wonderful fold out book (called a “lift-the-flap” book on the front cover) intended for very young readers; I would guess we’re talking Baby to Four. The drawings are lively; Sam Caldwell has included a number of anthropomorphized animals, each proudly bearing their own mustaches and placing them in a number of situations in which their mustache would be affected. What happens, for instance, when a bear with a mustache growls: it turns out, once the reader turns the flap, the mustache straightens out.
And of course, each animals’ mustache reacts its own way, with the final surprise being what happens when the reader has a mustache. We’re told “it can be a lot of fun,” and that text is accompanied with a mirror bound right into the book which shows the reader adorned with a mustache of his (or her) very own.
The drawings are wonderful, especially as each animal is surrounded with its own landscape complete with appropriate animals and plants. The deer, for example, is dressed in a jaunty running suit with red shorts, red tank top with white piping, and snazzy red sneakers.
It’s a very short book made for small hands to read with an adult’s help, and it’s all very simple but fun. Very young children would very much enjoy this work, largely because it’s extremely silly!