Broderick

Broderick
Edward Ormondroyd
illustrations by John Larrecq
Parnassus Press, 1969

I am a sucker for tight, little pen and ink drawings, so I was hooked on this one before I even opened the cover. For the California kid at heart, Broderick is the name of a wee mouse with big plans to conquer the world. One night while feasting on old book bindings (his favorite), he comes across an article about surfing and decides he is destined to become the most famous wave bound rodent to ever live. And he does just that in this sweet, silly tale about ambition, fame and practice, practice, practice!

A huge swell rose under him. As he went up the face of it, his surfboard began to slide forward. "Very well," Broderick thought. "Doomed I may be, but at least I can go to my doom in style." He stood up, made a smart kick turn to the right, and began to shoot across the face of the wave. He had never gone so gloriously fast in his life. His ears rippled and snapped behind him like flags in a gale. He shouted defiance and shook his fit at fate.

Thankful, Broderick is saved from various terrible fates and goes on to shine by dazzling a starstruck Malibu crowd "with this sun-bleached fur, deeply tanned tail, and a superb display of hot-dogging."

This book is what I would call beyond cute. Apparently the illustrator was one of the original members of the Santa Cruz Surf Club, so the book is pretty historically accurate (except for the part about a mouse winning fame and fortune on a surf board, of course.)