Profiles in Courage

“Hillary”

“Hillary,” a striking hagiography just out from Jonah Winter and Raul Colon (Schwartz & Wade Books, $17.99), unapologetically insists the time has come for Mrs. Clinton, who’s been summering in Amagansett of late, to ascend to the presidency, placing her in a historical timeline that begins with Shakespeare’s exemplar of strength, Queen Elizabeth I, and includes Joan of Arc and the fictional Rosie the Riveter.

They forgot Maggie Thatcher, but anyway, the book, billed as suitable for ages 4 to 8 but potentially useful even for middle schoolers, hits all the highlights of a life in politics, from Hillary’s 1969 Wellesley commencement address (in which she memorably delivered an unscripted rebuke to Senator Edward Brooke, a Vietnam War sympathizer who just minutes before had chastised antiwar demonstrators) up to her record-setting 112 countries visited as secretary of state in the Obama administration (“up in the air, wearing your sunglasses, checking your smartphone, your tray table piled high with reports to be read”).

Mr. Colon’s illustrations in watercolor and colored pencil are beautiful — smooth and almost sculptural in their monumentality, at times nearly worthy of a Diego Rivera mural (though Hill’s no socialist, not like that guy from Vermont). 

One other note: Mr. Winter takes pains to point out his subject’s efforts on health care during her husband’s presidency and how she had her own West Wing office, a first lady first. And if she was no potted plant during those years, the adult reader’s head may well swim with all the policies that 20 years on have lost their luster, to put it mildly.

But that’s a story for the coming electoral wars.

“Naughty Mabel”

“Hello, darlings. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Mabel. Mabel of the Hamptons,” a French bulldog says, addressing the reader from a lounge chair floating in a vast swimming pool, breaking the fourth wall, as it were, a la Hope and Crosby in their “Road” movies. Or maybe Bugs Bunny is more apt.

“And this,” the big-eared lapdog continues, gesturing with a fruity drink, “is my humble abode.” Columns, fountains, statuary, it out-Gatsbys Gatsby.

Thus opens “Naughty Mabel” (Simon & Schuster, $17.99) by Nathan Lane (of stage and screens big and small, yadda yadda) and his partner, Devlin Elliott, East Hampton part-timers, with illustrations by Dan Krall, who has worked on the animated movies “Coraline” and “The Boxtrolls.” Mabel, though based on the authors’ actual pet, seems kin to other undersized and impish kid-lit stars, from Ludwig Bemelmans’s Madeline to Ian Falconer’s girl pig Olivia.

The difference here being our anti-heroine’s impulse to wanton destruction for destruction’s sake — her head stuck in a Thanksgiving turkey’s body cavity, the Christmas tree bowled over, diamond ring and car keys swallowed, golf cart totaled, and soiree trashed by a raid targeting the pigs-in-a-blanket platter, the swells subsequently dispersed by potent doggie flatulence. 

“I just like to keep things interesting,” we’re told. 

A quibble arises with the appearance of two neighboring friends, Smarty-Cat and Scaredy-Cat, which doesn’t lead anywhere, and the story blows past a nice stopping point, when Mabel, taken aback by her owners’ forgiveness, offers, “Humans. Go figure.”

Be that as it may, Mr. Krall’s illustrations are appropriately antic and bold. As is the humor, for instance when Mabel relays her penchant for licking. Uh, even herself? “Do you mind, darlings?” she says, turning her back. “This is private.”

“The Mellops Go Spelunking”

Here’s a welcome return. We last heard from Tomi Ungerer, the Hans Christian Andersen Prize-winning author, illustrator, and former East Hamptoner, in 2013 with his mysterious “Fog Island,” in which a rustic brother and sister grow close in exploring a far-off, shrouded place. Now the publisher of that book, Phaidon, has put out a new edition of one of his early children’s books, “The Mellops Go Spelunking,” previously released in Germany nearly 38 years ago.

They’re pigs, the Mellops, adventurous pigs. Father, playing a not-so-adventurous round of golf, sees his ball disappear down a crevice and immediately rallies his sons to descend into the netherworld — ostensibly to go after it, but not really. To explore.

With rope ladder, provisions, helmets, and wiener dog in tow, they encounter everything conceivably of interest in a cavern, from icicles reminiscent of one of Mother’s cream cakes (which she just so happens to have stayed behind to bake) to stalagmites and stalactites (the kids learn the difference) to cavepig art on the walls (which they trace as a way of documenting) and prehistoric artifacts (earthenware, a fishbone needle) to smugglers’ stashed casks of perfume (it’s France).

More adventure than they bargained for comes by way of a downpour’s flood, and the Mellops have to use their wits, and those darn casks, to get out alive. 

It’s all good family fun, with illustrations by Mr. Ungerer that are quick and sketchy in a way not unlike William Steig’s. Dive in.