Hey, Al

Al, a city janitor, and his dog Eddie share a cramped, dingy apartment they are both openly tired of, and when a huge, well spoken bird appears at their window one evening offering to carry them off to a lush tropical paradise in the sky, Eddie talks a reluctant Al into going. The island delivers everything it promises at first, warm sun, easy food, no work, until the pair notice they have begun sprouting feathers themselves, the price, it turns out, of staying in paradise permanently. Al and Eddie fly for their lives back toward home, and Eddie falls into the ocean during the escape; Al, certain he has lost his only friend, is stunned with relief when Eddie proves to be an excellent swimmer and makes it home on his own. Back in their small, shabby apartment, the two look at it with something closer to affection than complaint, and Arthur Yorinks's text closes on the line that paradise lost is sometimes heaven found.

Richard Egielski illustrates the apartment in drab, muted colors and the island in a sudden riot of tropical color, letting that contrast do most of the emotional work the fable's brief text leaves unstated.

The book runs short and reads fast, well suited to a single sitting with four to eight year olds, and its comic tone keeps a fairly direct moral about contentment from feeling like a lecture. Because the danger in the story arrives disguised as a reward rather than a threat, sprouting feathers reads at first as wonderful before it reads as alarming, younger listeners often need a second pass through the book before they fully register what almost happened to Al and Eddie on that island.