by Tony Millionaire Brewed by the tailess mice from the walls of Becky's kitchen, Tony Millionaire's Billy Hazelnuts fuses the darker spirit of ancient fairy tales with a Lewis Carroll-esque absurdist sense of adventure. The moon is missing! Be careful! There's a steam-driven alligator right behind you! Don't forget the seeing-eye skunk! Famous for his bad-boy comic strip, Maak ies, and his children's books starring benign versions of the strip's antiheroes, Millionaire here essays a third stream of his peculiar creativity in a graphic-novel marchen, or Germanic folktalelike narrative. The title character is a truculent little manikin made by mice out of garbage. At first he menaces a farm woman, but her budding-scientist daughter, Becky, befriends him after replacing his original eyes with hazelnuts. Enchanted by the moon, impulsive Billy runs after it to find where it sets, with Becky hotly pursuing to keep him from getting lost. As soon as she apprehends him, a flying, walking, sailing ship fashioned by Becky's would-be suitor, Eugene, accosts the pair. After more weird science, a sea battle, and a second breakaway and Peer Gynt- like homecoming by Billy, he, Becky, and Eugene reconcile. Drawing in his established manner, with blocky, medieval-woodcut-like figures in action against intricate, frequently gorgeous land-, sea-, and cloudscapes, Millionaire fashions a tale as disquieting-comforting and psychologically ambiguous as anything the Grimms ever recorded. Ray Olson Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved I think Tony Millionaire can do only important things. -- Dave Eggers Millionaire is a great master of the old-time freewheeling comic strip. -- Publishers Weekly Tony Millionaire is worth a thousand Tony Thousandaires. -- Conan O'Brien Tony Millionaire  is the creator of the award-winning weekly syndicated comic strip Maakies . His books include Billy Hazelnuts , Billy Hazelnuts and the Crazy Bird, Der Struwwelmaakies , Drinky Crow's Maakies Treasury , Maakies with the Wrinkled Knees , Mighty Mite the Ear Mite , Premillennial Maakies , Little Maakies on the Prairie , The House at Maakies Corner , When We Were Very Maakies , 500 Portraits , and the Sock Monkey series of comics and storybooks. He lives in Maine.