Book on squirrels "really super"

I saw a squirrel the other day. It made me happy to see it. I chirped in hopes it would come say hello. It did! I think it thought I had a peanut. But I didn't. So it scampered away. And I was sad.\nI'm sure we've all experienced this before. Coming so close to the majestic creature that is the squirrel, then having it turn its bushy tail to our face and scurry in another direction. Or ... maybe not. But for all of us who have felt the shun of the squirrel, Graham Taylor and Graham Roumieu have created the perfect book.\n"A Really Super Book About Squirrels," written by Taylor and illustrated by Roumieu is just that. Really super. I mean ... really super. Any book that features a squirrel cutting the grass with a little mower on the cover is automatically lifted up to the ranks of Tolstoy and Dickens.\nDickens: Young orphan boy learns to survive in the Industrial Age of England.\nTolstoy: Young Russian noble learns to survive during the Napoleonic Wars.\nTaylor: Young poorly drawn man believes squirrel is hiding present for him in the attic.\nThe parallels are simply ... super.\nThe book begins, as all good books should, with the meeting:\n"Oh squirrel, we live so close yet we cannot be friends. Sometimes I see you sitting on the fence eating and I think you would make a good friend. When I try to give you a nut, you run away."\nAnd from this moment on, we know, though it pains us so, that "A Really Super Book About Squirrels" can't have a really super happy ending. But that doesn't prevent the book from asking all the important questions in life, like: "How can man and squirrel ever maintain a friendship?" and "Why don't squirrels look before they cross the road?" and, most importantly, "I wonder why new books always smell so nice?"\nThe book is small -- 24 pages -- and there are probably more words in this review than in the book. However, the power and depth of the words in this book are, well, beyond definition. Let's look at an example:\n"Why do bury your food in the ground? Wouldn't it get dirty? How do you know where to look when you get hungry? I keep my food in a cupboard."\nI can imagine Bill Walton exulting his praise for these words. "What power! What depth! A Shaq-like display of literary prowess!"\nHowever, what worth is a book with beautiful prose and no drawings? The answer, of course, being there is no worth to books without pictures. Luckily, this book has plenty of pictures.\nRoumieu's drawings look like they were done by a man in the midst of a seizure, but that is part of the appeal. It's rather fun to squint at the pictures and wonder if the animal is a squirrel or a bowling pin with a bushy tail. \nEven though it would be painful to deface a masterpiece of literature like this, in the back of the book, there is a place for the reader to put their own special observations about squirrels. Observations like "I hate the demon spawn" or "Did you know some squirrels bite the gonads off of a rival squirrel's male children?"\nIn the end, though, this is a touching story between a man and a squirrel and a love that could never be.\n"I'm running. I'm late. I don't have time to stand still. But there you are squirrel. Sitting on the fence so still. So calm. I don't have time for you today squirrel. I have to go. I turn around and you're gone. I'm sorry squirrel. I miss you already"