Cookie's Week

March 1, 1988
On Monday, Cookiea catfalls into the toilet. "There was water everywhere!'' On Tuesday, she knocks a plant off the windowsill. ``There was water everywhere!'' And so Cookie undergoes a week of disasters that dePaola illustrates with his usual skill, so that even the garbage Cookie strews over the floor looks great. Four scrapes later, the text ends with ``Tomorrow is Sunday. Maybe Cookie will rest.'' But Cookie, half-asleep on the rug, already has one eye on a bumblebee. This is a perfect choice for very young children, and extra-large print makes it even more accessible. Part of the fun of the illustrations is what is barely glimpsed: a tail extending from behind a curtain, very wet haunches exiting the bathroom or the same tail drifting over muddy footprints through the flower pots. Cookie appears in only three full-body shots throughout the book; the rest of the time she is almost out of the frame of her most recent disaster. Lively pastels with plenty of white offset the black cat's mischief. Ages 1-6.