Houghton Mifflin 2003
An amiable blue man with an elephant’s trunk welcomes visitors to Tippintown, where folks dine on delicacies like ‘carrot tulip pie.’ This effervescent tour includes a hike up Tippinoggin Mountain, the site of seven giant sculpted heads, and a triple-decker ‘trip in a triple canoe’…Tippintown is well worth a visit.
– Publisher’s Weekly
A blue man with an elephant nose takes readers on a nickel guided tour through Tippintown, “food included.” Each spread’s rhyme, presented on the left, is followed by a one-line, droll coda on the right: “We begin at the famous Amelia statue,/here in Tippin Square./As most of you know,/Miss Amelia Tippin/invented the folding chair./Then she became an astronaut,/now she’s a millionaire”-“I think that’s her over there.” The lilt and tone of this nonsense verse can’t help but recall Edward Lear. Brown’s distinctive watercolors, in the same hip palette as his Dutch Sneakers and Flea Keepers (Houghton, 2000), adopt a flat folk-art form but then tickle it under the chin with insane details, characters defined by ultramodern styles, and fantasy elements. The wackiness and offbeat sophistication push the art from just plain goofy to meaningfully eccentric. A gleeful book for solo or shared reading.
– School Library Journal