The Boy Who Was Followed Home Book

Although I have always loved Margaret Mahy's fiction - The Tricksters is one of my favorite young-adult novels of all time - for some reason I have never looked at any of her many picture-books. But when I read, in Betsy Hearne's article "Nobody Knows..." (published in the September/October 2009 issue of the Horn Book Magazine, devoted to the theme of "Trouble") that this sweet little story, which first saw print in 1975, had been challenged - They give the little boy a pill! Oh no! There's a witch! And you can find her in the telephone directory! Quelle horreur! - I knew I had to track it down. How glad I am that I did!

The story is wonderfully amusing, in that matter-of-factly surreal way that I have come to appreciate in picture-books of a certain stamp. Think Mac Barnett's Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem , or David Small's Imogene's Antlers , in which the young protagonists confront some unusual circumstances (caring for a pet blue whale, and growing antlers, respectively). In The Boy Who Was Followed Home, young Robert finds that he has an ever-growing train of hippopotami following him home from school, and while he himself is pleased - he'd always liked these lumbering creatures, and "was delighted to think that he was the sort of boy that hippopotami would follow" - his parents are less than thrilled at their presence in the back yard. Naturally, when a boy is being followed by a hippopotamine crowd, the solution is to call in a witch, and so Robert's father hires Mrs. Cathy Squinge. Unfortunately (or fortunately, as the case may be), he doesn't listen to her warning about the side-effects of the pill she prescribes...

I loved this book! The story just tickled my funny bone, and the ending - which put me strongly in mind of the similar conclusion in Imogene's Antlers (mentioned above), was just delightful! Steven Kellogg's artwork, which didn't impress me terribly, based on my perusal of the cover, ended up working very well with the narrative. All in all, a fabulous addition to any young reader's picture-book shelf. If this is trouble, then I want more of it!