One Potato Review

This starts out looking a little like Pam Conrad’s and Richard Egielski’s The Tub People from 1999, in fact you spend most of this story in nervous anticipation of whatever could match the terror of getting washed down a drain, and start to guess at possible victims arrayed across a windowsill – a toy owl waiting for the moon, a pig with an umbrella waiting for the rain, a bear with a kite waiting for wind, a sled dog waiting for snow, and a rabbit “with stars” content to not know exactly what he is looking for.Someone leaves “gifts” – an acorn, a marble, a shell. Then once in a while the toys receive company – an exotic elephant who seems not well suited to waiting, and a cat with a couple of surprises – still you can count the major plot turns here in exclamation marks: just one, and even that signals a continuation. The expected remains nevertheless always unexpected – clouds like puffy mirrors floating by, fireworks, butterflies, curtains of icicles, leaves giving shape to the wind – and that is, amazingly, enough. What starts out looking a little melancholy and neglected ends up seeming like a pretty special gig.