Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay.
KAMAL RAJA BIOGRAPHY FREE
It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway-the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty. Pete’s fans might find it groovy anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!” The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea.
GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude. The book ends with “10 Facts About the Thar Desert in India” that are both exoticizing and overgeneralized, consistently referring to “Indian” practice and tradition despite the geographically specific heading. The only women depicted appear in the occasional background. The illustrations are equally confusing, pairing mostly turbaned, traditionally dressed adults with a bareheaded protagonist clad in button-down shirt and shorts. The book’s ending is more of a cliffhanger than a real conclusion to its meandering plot, and readers are left guessing whether or not Raja will keep Kamal forever. But at the fair and the race, Kamal misbehaves again, making it impossible for Bapu to sell her. In a last-ditch effort to keep Kamal, Raja tries to train his new pet to participate in the annual camel race, thinking that if Kamal wins the large cash prize, Bapu will change his mind and allow the animal to stay.
Unfortunately, however, Kamal is “a wild camel with wild ways” and becomes so destructive and disruptive that Bapu insists on selling the camel at an upcoming fair. Delighted, Raja is hopeful that he can convince his father to allow Kamal to stay with them forever. After school one day, Raja befriends a baby camel that follows him home.Ī wary Bapu agrees to allow the camel to stay until they can find the animal a permanent home.