It’s a wonder it took 10 years for Anne Villeneuve’s l’Écharpe rouge to be translated. As a Governor General’s award winner, it should be a prime candidate for an English readership. Besides, there is only one sentence in the whole book, making translation considerably less troublesome than usual.

The sentence appears on the very first spread: “‘Another gray day,’ says Turpin, the taxi driver.” From then on, Villeneuve tells the story exclusively through pictures. The diminutive cab driver picks up a mysterious gentleman dressed in black with a red scarf wound around his neck. When the stranger leaves his scarf behind, Turpin runs after him, past a lizard-jester on a unicycle, and into a circus tent. After dodging a bear on roller skates, Turpin falls into the clutches of a lion, who tries to swallow both him and the scarf, until forced to open wide by Carla, the lion tamer. On he goes, braving mischievous monkeys, a juggler and his elephant, a terrifying tightrope, and at last, a marvellous magician, who turns out to be the scarf’s grateful owner.

There is nothing particularly original about the plot, but the illustrations are certainly distinctive. Turpin is a mouse, although only his long nose and whiskers give that away. (His tail is hidden inside his taxi-driver uniform.) He is drawn in black and white, almost as if the artist had forgotten to colour him in, though plenty of colour swirls around him, rendered in soft, scribbled crayon, against which Turpin pops out delightfully. With an amazing economy of line, Villeneuve makes her plucky hero express a multitude of emotions: fear, determination, relief, and cheerful satisfaction.

When the art’s this good, who needs words?