Arthur Crimp's parents have taken him on a special weekend trip to the city for his birthday. They have a room on the sixth floor of the Excelsior Hotel. His father goes out to a toy store to find a special gift. Arthur already has lots of toys. His dad picks a stuffed animal that has a tag on it that reads "Thing Thing." It is an animal that is not quite a bunny rabbit, a dog, a bear, or a cat. But when he presents the toy to Arthur, the boy angrily rejects it for not being "any real sort of animal at all," and tosses Thing Thing out the window.
"Oh dear, thought Thing Thing to itself. This is bad, this is very bad." All he wanted was someone to love him, talk to him, dress him up, and sleep with him at night. As he falls, the rejected toy passes different floors, and the residents there — a little girl with a hurt ankle, a robin on her nest, some business people at a marketing workshop, an old lady eating lunch, a spider, a young couple, and a baby in a carriage.
In this children's book for those ages 4 - 7, Cary Fagen, an award-winning author for adults and children, helps us to see that there is always a bright side to every seeming tragedy and that the yearning for love and acceptance resides in all beings — large and small, animate and inanimate. The delightful illustrations by Nicolas Debon greatly enhance the story.
