Thank You, Octopus by Darren Farrell
In Thank You, Octopus, Farrell's eight-armed cephalopod is a well-intentioned parental type (the New York Times review brilliantly referred to Octopus as an "eight-tentacled au pair") making his home on a cozy tug boat in New York Harbor with his young friend. Farrell's illustrations are filled with little details and foreshadowing that add to consecutive readings and his characters are the perfect combination of cartoonish and childish. The color palette Farrell employs is perfectly nautical and pleasantly muted with bursts of bright yellows and reds.
Octopus knows just what needs to be done, but doesn't always know how to do it. I don't want to give away every unexpected, Amelia-Bedelia-type-misinterpretation made by the well meaning Octopus because the surprise of the page turn is priceless, even after you've read Thank You, Octopus a handful of times. But . . .
. . . it's very hard not to share a couple of my favorites here. A cry of "Bedtime ahoy" from Octopus kicks of the nighttime ritual with a bath - in a tub filled with egg salad. Brushing teeth, being rocked to bed, clearing the monsters out from under the bed (and relocating them to the closet...) are also up for misunderstandings and laughs in Thank You, Octopus. The boy politely, but firmly declines each time until he just can't take it anymore and has a bit of an understandable tantrum.
But nothing comes between these two pals, as the very clever back of the dust jacket shows us!
Source: A Bookstore!