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Wander into Wild Rumpus Books in Minneapolis and you might miss the tawny cat napping in the window, spine pressed against the sunniest corner of the sill.
Venture deeper into the cozy warren of picture and chapter books, and you’ll begin to detect a theme, if not a whiff of birdseed. That lazy feline known as Booker T. Jones turns out to be one of many beasts on the premises.
Dave is a 27-year-old cockatiel who looks as if he applied too much coral rouge. Mo, a 26-year-old Barbary dove, roosts peacefully in a cage atop the sale shelf. There’s also Newbery and Caldecott, a pair of gentle chinchillas; the Stinky Cheese Man, who, like all crested geckos, licks his own eyeballs; and Eartha Kitt, a jet-black Manx who politely recoiled from a visitor's hand while curled, cinnamon bun-style, in a mail bin.
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And, finally, there are 10 fish in a tank in the bathroom, all named for the children’s book illustrators Mac Barnett and Shawn Harris. Their successors will be too, according to bookstore tradition.
