"TOYS GO OUT: BEING THE ADVENTURES OF A KNOWLEDGEABLE STINGRAY, A TOUGHY LITTLE BUFFALO, AND SOMEONE CALLED PLASTIC" BY EMILY JENKINS, ILLUSTRATED BY PAUL O. ZELINSKY; SCHWARTZ & WADE BOOKS, $16.95. FOR AGES 7 TO 11.

Cover art by Caldecott Medalist Paul O. Zelinsky sets the tone for this book that feels like an instant classic. Hawai'i children's book enthusiasts may recall Zelinsky's exquisite paintings exhibited at the Honolulu Academy of Arts when the artist highlighted the University of Hawai'i's Children's Literature Hawai'i Conference in 2004.

"I have wonderful memories of that trip to Hawai'i," Zelinsky said in an e-mail.

"Toys Go Out," well-crafted by author Emily Jenkins, evokes elements of masterworks "The Wizard of Oz," "Winnie-the-Pooh," and "Toy Story." Six stories connect main characters Lumpy, StingRay and Plastic, with extraordinarily detailed black-and-white illustrations throughout. The toys experience the roller-coaster of emotions familiar to all children — joy, anxiety, frustration, love, doubt.

Zelinsky's Caldecott Medal for "Rapunzel," and three Caldecott honors, put the artist in high demand. Of many offers, why did Zelinsky choose to illustrate "Toys Go Out"?

"It was partly that it made me feel so good to read a manuscript that was both young and completely and deeply human. For instance, at one point a rubber toy, no less, undergoes an existential crisis — not generally the kind of thing you would think to give to a second grader, but this scene was as moving as it was simple and accessible, and the resolution was exhilarating," Zelinsky said.

In one story, Plastic, the character to whom Zelinsky refers, longs to figure out what she is. She gets a dictionary:

"She finds the Ps and reads: 'Plastic. A material produced by polymeri-something-or-other' (a very long word).

"But where do we live?" wonders Plastic. "What do we like to eat?"

She reads on. "Plastic. Capable of being shaped or formed. Also, artificial."

Plastic doesn't know what artificial means, so she looks that up, too.

"Fake," says the dictionary. "Not natural."

Artificial doesn't sound nice at all. Plastic scoots under the high bed and doesn't come out for several hours."

"The writing impressed me," Zelinsky said. "There were wonderful (and visually interesting) scenes all through the manuscript.

"On top of that, I was in the middle of doing lots of illustrations for 'The Shivers in the Fridge,' a picture book that I would call wild and zany, and great fun (and it is coming out this fall, too), so I was feeling ready to do some carefully rendered and classically good-looking drawings, and this manuscript was tailor-made for the task."

In the end, "Toys Go Out" was a manuscript Zelinsky said he simply couldn't turn down.

"I knew what the drawings ought to look like, and it would be a terrible shame, I thought, if someone else did them and they came out looking wrong," he said.

"Toys Go Out" strikes a lovely balance between evocative writing, memorable characters, crisp design and wondrous artwork that, all together, came out just right.