A 1992 collection of the first four books in the series.note
The Where Are They? series was a series of children's Picture Books illustrated by American comic book artist Tony Tallarico for Kidsbooks Inc.
Like other books of the search-and-find genre, each book would hold several colorful drawings each spanning two pages for the viewer to look through in search for the titular character, the occasional person also looking for The Namesake, and a checklist of items that can be found in a scene.
Several books where published in the late 1980s and through the 1990s, with those frequently being put into Omnibuses.
Individual Where Are They? books include:
- Find Freddie (1988)
- Hunt for Hector (1989)
- Look for Lisa (1989)
- Search for Sam (1989)
- Find Frankie (1990)
- Search for Santa (1990)
- Find Freddie & Lisa in the Haunted House (1991)
- Search for Santa's Helpers (1991)
- Detect Donald (1991)
- Look for Laura (1991)
- Search for Susie (1991)
- Find Freddie Around the World (1992)
- Look for Lisa: Time Traveler (1992)
- Search for Sylvester (1992)
- Where's Wendy? (1992)
- Where's Cupid? (1992)
- Where's the Bunny? (1993)
- Where's Columbus? (1997)
Track down those Tropes!
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Sam has a red bowtie, Susie wears a pink shirt, Sylvester has a baseball cap and neckercheief, Bunny Honey has a vest and bowler hat... and those are just title characters.
- Achievements in Ignorance: The not-so-detective Detective Donald wins ten film awards for Best Detective after walking through ten film sets without even realizing it until he stumbles into the Academy Awards.
- Added Alliterative Appeal: Most individual books use a synonym for "search" or "find" that is alliterative with the central character.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: The aliens, monsters, and talking dinosaurs throughout the books come not only in a plethora of shapes, but also a fair array of colors as well. See just below for more on the lattermost.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Most animals through out the books are colored realistically, but the dinosaurs come in more colorful shades due to paleontology's long history of not knowing what exactly they looked like, and elephants are usually literal Pink Elephants.
- Anachronism Stew: Things that don't fit the time setting of the scene can be found regularly. This by virtue due to the very premise of Look for Lisa: Time Traveler.
- Animal Jingoism: Found regularly throughout the books, exaggerated on some pages such as "Search for Sam at the Battle of Cats and Mice".
- Art-Style Clash: While most of the books are drawn in simple cartoons, a more detailed style seen in Tallarico's work in the comic book industry is sometimes added. Possibly the most egregious example of a clash is in the page "Look for Laura at School", where a kid is holding a giant bass fish that isn't even lineart, but painted.
- Artistic License – Chemistry: One page in Look for Lisa: Time Traveler takes place on a cluttered table of the odd Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks among a bunch of garbage. Aside from that improper work environment, (most) scientists wouldn't have a funnel spitting out technicolor bubbles into the air or use a Bunsen burner to bake a pie.
- Artistic License – Geology: Not a case about the Earth, but its moon. The page "Look for Lisa in these Cavernous Craters" in Look for Lisa: Time Traveler is set on the Moon for one of NASA's moon landings, but the reddish-orange landscape leaves it so the viewer can easily mistake it for Mars. Justified by the book's nature as a Hidden Object Game, as the Moon's more eye-catching color now contrasts against the grey of the moon lander and Lisa can blend in with her orange shirt.
- Artistic License – Paleontology: Tallarico took liberties in depicting dinosaurs' coloration, anthropomorphism, and extancy. This is most prevalent in Search for Susie.
- Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Most animals don't wear any footwear unless its part of an attire they're wearing, like big goofy clown shoes.
- Baseball Episode: The eighth page of Find Freddie, "Find Freddie at the Ballpark".
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: While some characters have the sense to put on a spacesuit, most characters in a space scene don't even bother to wear a Fishbowl Helmet.
- Beach Episode: The third page of Find Freddie, "Find Freddie at the Beach".
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Some aliens are nonsensical creatures with walking on odd amounts of feet and tooting from horns in their Cephalothoraces
- Black Comedy: Some of the Funny Background Events can have a little edge to them, whether its a man proposing an easier way to shave than with a guillotine, a ghoul impaled by an umbrella, or two pigs watching a football team of dogs throwing the old "pigskin" around.— Pig 1: He's carrying Uncle Nick!— Pig 2: He's going to kick Aunt Em!
- CAPS LOCK: Everything within the illustrations are written in capital letters, neat and legible for the children.
- Captain Obvious: A Running Gag is that object might be labeled "this is a(n) [object]", or someone or something saying who, what, or how they are.
- Cat Concerto: "Search for Sam at the Midnight Meowing" sees a horde of cats meowing on and round the fences behind an apartment complex to hostile reception.— Sam: What does "meow" mean?
- Cat/Dog Dichotomy: Most abundant in "Search for Sam with the Dogbusters"
- Cats Are Lazy: One cat tries to sleep trough the Battle of Cats and Mice.
- Cats Are Snarkers: Sam and some of his fellow cats crack a few quips.
- Christmas Episode: The tenth page of Search for Sam, "Search for Sam at the North Pole". Also goes for the entirety of Search for Santa and Search for Santa's Helpers to the series.
- Circus Episode: and "Search for Sylvester at this Silly Circus".
- Civilized Animal: They can be found in any book, most abundant in the cats in Search for Sam or the dinosaurs in Search for Susie.
- Confused Question Mark: Sometimes that's all that's in a Speech Bubble. Because of how Tallarico would write his question marks, they look less like "?" and more like "ẓ".
- Cowboy Episode: The tenth page of Find Freddie, "Find Freddie in the Old West Town".
- Disproportionate Retribution
- A man in stockades in "Find Freddie at the Museum" defends himself, saying "[he] didn't mean to touch the painting."
- Two men try to stop the Cat Concerto in "Search for Sam at the Midnight Meowing" by loading a cannon.
- In "Detect Donald at the Academy Award", most of the actors and audience are angered by the trespassing Detective Donald winning Best Detective in an accidental
Award Snub, with several of them threatening Donald with harm.
- The Ditz: in "Search for Sam with the Dogbusters", there's a horse that laments having lost his saddle. The saddle is as close to the horse's Speech Bubble as he is to it.
- Dumb Dinos: Like any other extras, the dinos aren't exempt from being down-right stupid. Not even Susie's Bumbling Dad.
- Easter Bunny: Bunny Honey is one.
- Elephants Are Scared of Mice: One panicked elephant finds itself stuck in the middle of the Battle of Cats and Mice.
- Emphasize EVERYTHING: It's a good guess to say that 99% of all lines of dialogue across the series ends in either an exclamation point or a question mark.
- The Fat Episode: The third page of Search for Sam, "Search for Sam at the Fat Cat Health Club". Not for Sam himself, but all the other cats there.
- Fire Is Red
- Fishbowl Helmet: The titular characters always wear one when when they're in space or underwater, some of the extra often wearing one as well. Humorously, Lisa's is shaped to fit her Girlish Pigtails.
- Fixing the Game: At the race at the end of Find Freddie, Hector admits to doing this... poorly.— Hector: This race was fixed! I fixed it and I still lost!
- Forced from Their Home: The Monster Club in Find Frankie is forced to find "a nice, new, ugly place to meet" when their clubhouse is set to be demolished, motivating Frankie for his adventure.
- Funny Background Event: All over the place, different comical quips and conundrums can be found.
- Frankenstein's Monster: The monster is one of several Public Domain Characters found throughout the series, with even a young one named Frankie being the central character of Find Frankie.
- Franken-X: Aside from Frankie, a few extra introduce themselves such, including:
- Frankendog in "Hunt for Hector at Dog School".
- Frankenswine in "Hunt for Hector at the K-9 Cleanup".
- Frankencat in "Search for Sam at the Battle of Cats and Mice".
- Hidden Object Game
- Home of Monsters: Frankie quests out to find one in Find Frankie.
- Home Sweet Home: The first page in the first book is "Find Freddie at Home".
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: There's the occasional "one way" sign that points in two or more directions, or a sign prohibiting doing something in a place explicitly for that purpose.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: At the end of Find Frankie, a sun umbrella is being supported up by a ghoulish goblin who is bent over with the shaft piercing through his chest. He seems... fine... -ish.— Monster: It only hurts when I laugh!
- Imposter Forgot One Detail: At the end of Look for Laura and Search for Susie, they along with Donald and Frankie can be found on the last page a couple of look-a-likes with minor differences (and Speech Bubbles explaining they aren't the real one). Frankie, at the end of Detect Donald, just has one who is missing the Pauper Patch on the overalls.— Not Frankie: I'm the
stand-in! - In Space, Everyone Can See Your Face: Since everything is colorful and most spacesuits just consist of a clear Fishbowl Helmet. Averted with the NASA astronaut in "Look for Lisa in these Cavernous Craters".
- I Will Find You: Susie's mom and dad, trying to find her throughout the Big Fun Amusement Park.
- Law of Alien Names: Averted. The name of the titular alien of Look for Laura isn't alien, its just Latin.
- Library Episode: The eighth page of Look for Lisa, "Look for Lisa at the Library".
- Limited Wardrobe: Each protagonist wears the same thing throughout each of their appearances.
- Living Dinosaurs: Most or at least a fair majority of the characters in Search for Susie are dinosaurs, including Susie herself.
- Lost in a Crowd: Everything is this to the viewer. Explicitly the plot for Search for Susie, where Susie has gotten separated from her parents at an amusement part.
- The Man in the Moon: In the space scenes, you may find some crescent moons with faces. Just "Find Freddie in Space" alone has ten of them.
- Moon Rabbit: The outlines of a rabbit can be found on the moon in "Look for Lisa in these Cavernous Craters".
- Movie-Theater Episode
- In ''Find Frankie at the Theater", Frankie finds his way into theater hosting a play so horrendous, not even a little Frankenstein's Monster like him can stand being there.
- The entirety of Detect Donald may be this, as Donald wanders through several movie sets without even realizing it.
- Older Than They Look: One elderly-looking critic of the play in "Find Frankie in the Theater" reveals himself to be the case.— "This show ages you! I'm only nine years old!"
- A Pirate 400 Years Too Late: Pirates can be found about, whether it's lone ones wandering a field of ghosts and ghouls looking for his ship or a foul-breathed one in the Monster Club, to a whole crew of them in "Detect Donald at the Pirates' Battle". Justified for the latter, as it turns out to be the set of a pirate movie.
- A Planet Named Zok: Laura's homeworld, Maxx.
- Painting the Medium
- In both "Look for Laura on the Planet Maxx" and "Look for Laura at the Welcome Home Party", the Speech Bubbles have little red antennae like Laura or most of Maxx's inhabitants.
- The occasional character who is upside down may have their Speech Bubbles oriented with them.
- Recycled In Space: The second page of Find Freddie ("Find Freddie in Space") and the tenth page of Hunt for Hector ("Hunt for Hector in Space").
- Road Trip Plot: The fifth page of Find Freddie, "Find Freddie on the School Bus Trip".
- Rhyming Names
- The main character of Where's the Bunny? is a white rabbit named Bunny Honey.
- One of the places you for Frankie in is a cafeteria called the Yum-Yum Emporium.
- Running Gag: Signs and Speech Bubbles planted about regularly say things such as:
- "For rent"/"Vacant"
- "This is a(n) X!"/"I'm a(n) X!"
- "One way"/"This way"/"No way"
- "Boy, am I Lost!"
- "Do not read this"
- "Rest area"/"This is not a rest area"
- "Hi, Mom!"
- Santa Claus: Outside of Search for Santa and Search for Santa's Helpers, the jolly fat man can be found in other books whether visiting the museum or flying through thick airport traffic. A cat Santa, Santa Claws, is even found in "Search for Sam at the North Pole".
- Schmuck Bait: You can often find signs reading the following:
- Signature Headgear: Freddie's goggles; Donald's fedora; Bunny Honey's bowler hat; Wendy's witch hat; and what else but Santa Claus and his famous cap?
- Small Taxonomy Pools: The dinosaurs are usually just generic dromaesaurids; stegosaurids; and theropods, and the only pterosaurs are pterodactyloids.
- Space Episode: Several pages across several books, like "Find Freddie in Space", "Hunt for Hector in Space", and "Look for Lisa among these Friendly Aliens".
- Speech Bubbles
- The Stinger: At the end of the books, simpler one-page illustrations with all of the batch's protagonists can be found. (ex. Freddie, Hector, Lisa, and Sam in their books.)
- Talking Animal: If an animal has something to say, the viewer or other extras should be able to understand them.
- 13 Is Unlucky: The second page of Search for Sam, "Search for Sam on Friday the 13th". One thing to look for on that is thirteen instances of the numeral "13".
- Technicolor Science: Any Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks will be filled with richly colored chemicals.
- Time Travel Episode: Lisa's third book, Look for Lisa: Time Traveler.
- Visual Pun: Chock full of 'em.
- Xtreme Kool Letterz
- Water Is Blue
- Weird Moon: Not only do crescent moons with a face pop up a few times, but in "Look for Lisa in these Cavernous Craters" our Moon is colored red.
- Written Sound Effect
- Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: Lightning bolts and electricity are colored yellow.
