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StingRay, Lumphy, and Plastic are three toys who love a little girl so much they panic when she plays with other toys and plan a rescue mission when they think she is lost. To them, she is the Girl, who sleeps on a high bed with many fluffy pillows. She has a backpack they don’t like being inside, and a new friend named Shay. When StingRay realizes the girl took a box of dominoes, a cartoon of LEGOs and two Barbie dolls on her vacation, she cries “Oh no!” and says, “Why did she take all the second-rate toys and leave us?”
Plastic tries to calm the others by saying “Maybe she went to a place that was good for Barbies. Some kind of special Barbie place, where stingrays would get bored.” But as the days go by and the girl still isn’t back from her vacation, the toys start imagining the little girl is lost and in need of rescuing. Lumphy the Buffalo is the first toy to grab a dinosaur placement and leave the house by sliding down a snow bank outside the window. Unfortunately, the rescue plan comes to an abrupt end when Lumphy stops at the bottom of the snow bank, jumps off the placement and sinks into a deep hole of snow. With a little teamwork, (and a bowl-scraping spatula), the three best friends manage to pull through.
As in their first book, Toys Go Out, each chapter will have readers laughing as the three friends find ways to deal with new experiences and unexpected developments. In this latest book by Emily Jenkins, StingRay, Lumphy and Plastic meet the dreaded garbage-eating shark (later to be named DaisySparkle) and, with help from The Chewing Society of North America, they free one of the toy mice from the vacuum cleaner.
StingRay, Lumphy and Plastic learn that the Girl, the wooden rocking horse and the toy mice have names, and that the dryer actually can talk clearly. Although the one-eared sheep loses part of her second ear in this book and StingRay gets into a fight that results in stitches, the friends have reasons to celebrate in the end. They dance and sing, as before finding happiness in being together.
The black-and-white illustrations in Toy Dance Party show the toys playing together, working together, and sometimes getting into trouble together. Not only are the illustrations eye-catching, they warm your heart. To see StingRay with her flipper resting on Plastic or the one-eared sheep lying on the rug with her last good ear stuck to the floor endears these characters even more to the already smitten.
Emily Jenkins has written many books for children, including the picture books The Little Bit Scary People, My Favorite Thing, and Five Creatures. Her adult novel, Mister Posterior and the Genius Child, was chosen by Barnes and Noble as one of their “Discover Great New Writers” picks. She has reviewed picture books for the New York Times Book Review and written articles for the Village Voice and Salon. Jenkins studied English at Vassar before going to Columbia to study for her doctorate in 19th-century English literature. She lives in New York.
Paul O. Zelinsky has received a Caldecott Medal for Rapunzel and three Caldecott honors for Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin and Swamp Angel. The illustrator of several books for children including Toys Go Out, The Shivers in the Fridge and Awful Ogre Running Wild, Zelinsky grew up in Illinois drawing from an early age. A hand he drew at age 14 was used in a math textbook written by his father; his first assigned illustration was for an art editor at the New York Times. Zelinsky holds a graduate degree in painting from Tyler School of Art and lives in New York with his wife and children.
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Toy Dance Party