This picture book by well-known Ontario illustrator and author Eugenie Fernandes reads almost like a folktale: a child welcomes one pet into her home, then another, then another, leaving readers to wonder where it will end.

In a folktale, the ending would probably have involved some sort of comical disaster, but Fernandes’ story has a modern, reasonable twist. When, after rescuing a cat, a rabbit, a duck, a snake, and several other pets, young Emily is offered a horse, even this animal-friendly child can understand her mother’s objection that they have no place to keep it. However, this is not quite the end of the story. The farmer, who so appreciated Emily’s help with tending his animals that he’d offered her a horse, has an alternative gift. The story ends with Emily and her animal friends contemplating a very large egg, and wondering what is about to hatch from it. (Young fans of Harry Potter will expect a dragon, at least!)

The cheerful, cozy mood of the tale is reflected in Fernandes’ pictures, in their sunshine, open doors, rounded shapes and soft colours, with animals nuzzling each other and the little girl who has taken them in. In bouncy rhyming couplets, the text carries the young reader along with humorous expectation, and the pleasure of savouring words like “wiggly pollywog,” “ambled,” and “melancholy.”

Advice in a disclaimer at the front of the book (that the reader who finds an orphaned animal should contact the humane society) is unlikely to sway readers who see Emily and her cat, rat, dog, snake, and bird living harmoniously in a modern Eden. And as Fernandes points out: “This story is almost entirely true. It happened to me – it could happen to you.”