Come Back Soon by Daniel Schallau

From the Publisher

It’s a long way from Elephant Island to Icetown,
but good friends will travel great distances to visit one another. 
And so Elephant leaves home to see his penguin penpals—
Elephant has helped them build a hotel, and there will be a party
in his honor. In Icetown, things don’t go as planned.
In fact, they don’t go smoothly at all.  But just like friends will travel far across the sea to be with one another,
good friends will also always help to make things right. A story of friendship, a story of travel and global community, Come Back Soon will cheer anyone who has ever made a mistake and been forgiven.

School Library Journal

K-Gr 2—Elephant is off to visit his friends, the penguins, in Icetown. He had helped them build a hotel several months earlier, and they now wish to honor him at its dedication. Unfortunately, in his haste to pick up his custom-made suit, his rented snowball—the means of transportation in Icetown—careens out of control and smashes the hotel. Elephant and his penguin pals cheerfully rebuild, and at last the dedication is held. The story is rather long and the action minimal, but the Arthur Geisert-like pen-and-ink and colored-pencil illustrations have more to offer. They are replete with numerous tiny details that children are likely to pore over, making the book more suitable as a read-alone or for one-on-one sharing. An additional purchase.—Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ

Kirkus Reviews

This busily surreal tale will make readers feel as though they've walked in on the middle of a conversation. An architect elephant receives a "fish letter" from Icetown. The penguins in Icetown have requested his presence to honor him for the hotel he designed for them. He gladly comes, but forgets his suit. The penguins hurry to get one made for him, but in all the hastiness, Elephant rolls too fast on his snowball (Icetown's mode of transportation) and crashes into the hotel. It takes a week to rebuild, but Elephant sees his friends through and all ends well. The frenetic story reads a bit like a child making it up: There was an elephant! And all these penguins! And they rode on snowballs! And the elephant built the penguins a hotel, but then he crashed into it! Both the ingenuous present-tense narration and the intricate, architecturally inspired black-lined drawings will bring to mind as well that famous French elephant who also buys a suit. The detail-filled illustrations challenge the eye, at once amazing and confusing. Undeniably well-meaning, but a bit of a mess. (Picture book. 3-6)

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