SHY ONES

The front endpapers introduce readers to Maurice, a flapjack octopus, an impossibly adorable pink sea critter who hides behind his mom, under his desk at school, and in anything he can find. The mysteriously omniscient narrator suggests that “Right now, you’re probably thinking ‘What a bore!’ But I wouldn’t be so quick to jump to conclusions.” Following this observation, readers see Maurice jetting off to the Deep Blue Dance Hall and performing a solo dance in an extremely cute six-panel sequence, possibly to an unseen audience. The story concludes with Maurice being dragged to a birthday party, hidden under a paper bag with a delightfully grouchy face drawn on it. There he meets a similarly disguised yellow boxfish named Lucy, who turns out to have been the narrator the whole time. Naturally, the two become friends. Careful observers who flip back through the book will realize that Lucy has been hiding in the backgrounds of multiple earlier pages. Gorgeous, muted illustrations show an entrancing variety of sea life, and the personalities of each creature carry the story rather than the awkward prose and inconsistent storyline (that dance sequence is delightful but extraneous).

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