''Tinker and Tanker'' is a children's book series written and illustrated by Richard Scarry, and published in the U.S. by Doubleday from 1960 to 1963.

Overview

The title characters live in a place called Tootletown. Upon the first book's release in 1960, Doubleday described both of them as "Tinker, the quick-witted

rabbit Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also includes the hares), which is in the order Lagomorpha (which also includes pikas). They are familiar throughout the world as a small herbivore, a prey animal, a domesticated ...

, and Tanker, the strong, steady

hippopotamus The hippopotamus (''Hippopotamus amphibius;'' ; : hippopotamuses), often shortened to hippo (: hippos), further qualified as the common hippopotamus, Nile hippopotamus and river hippopotamus, is a large semiaquatic mammal native to sub-Sahar ...

." A total of six titles were published within the next three years. According to Walter Retan and Ole Risom, " heir adventureswere typical picture storybooks, with simple plots and very little text. The characters were all animals, for the most part behaving very much like humans, and the drawings showed the strong sense of the absurd that would become a trademark of carry'sbooks." Cost restrictions at Doubleday caused the illustrations within each book to alternate between full-color and

monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, mon ...

; this limitation also affected Scarry's work for a compilation of

Jean de La Fontaine Jean de La Fontaine (, ; ; 8 July 162113 April 1695) was a French Fable, fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his ''La Fontaine's Fables, Fables'', which provided a model for subs ...

's fables. Ultimately, ''Tinker and Tanker'' only proved a moderate success. Three of the stories were collected for an

omnibus edition An omnibus edition or omnibus is a book containing multiple creative works by the same or, more rarely, different authors. Commonly two or more of the works have been previously published as books, but a collection of shorter works, or shorter w ...

in 1968.

Titles

* ''Tinker and Tanker'' (1960) * ''Tinker and Tanker Out West'' (1961) * ''Tinker and Tanker and Their Space Ship'' (1961) * ''Tinker and Tanker and the Pirates'' (1961) * ''Tinker and Tanker: Knights of the Round Table'' (1963) * ''Tinker and Tanker in Africa'' (1963)

References

{{Portal bar, Children's literature American children's books American picture books Series of children's books Anthropomorphic rabbits and hares Children's books about rabbits and hares Hippopotamuses in popular culture Children's books about friendship Short stories about talking animals Doubleday (publisher) books Book series introduced in 1960 Publications established in 1960