The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude. Tuohy’s cartoons add little nuance to Dunham’s story.Īn oyster bed with but one oyster-maybe it should be called an oyster cot-and “friends” that make the word enemy sound inviting? Go figure. He has a refrain he pipes back to these bullies: “Don’t worry about me”-as if-“I’m making something BEAUTIFUL, you’ll see.” Well, of course the oyster is doing its nacreous thing to another one of his life’s little irritations, finally popping out a pearl that would have made Elizabeth Taylor swoon. The angelfish: “You’re not as pretty as me.” And the jellyfish: “What can you do against others who prey?” The crab: “I use my claws to help me eat, / but you have neither arms nor feet.” A wise old sea turtle tells the others to back off, but Mr. They are more into being mean, expressing themselves in occasional couplets and sometimes straightforward cruelty. But these “friends” are not really curious anyway. “His sea creature friends wanted to know / what he was doing all by himself down below,” a fair enough question, as an oyster bed should be fairly teeming with oysters.

“In the ocean on an oyster bed lived a lonely oyster,” writes Dunham. Turns out that many sea creatures are as catty as the popular-student clique in every high school, but the oyster is much more than meets the eye.

Going for Oysters by Jeanie Adams