ZOMG! Check it:
The Oyster
What is moister
Than an oyster?
Grandpa's Pamper
Can be damper.
And that's not the worst of it! In three stories and a bunch of poems, Simpsons writer Mike Reiss deploys gleefully subversive wit to merrily bash the stuffin' out of cute fuzzy animals, exposing them for the gluttonous freeloading nonconformists that they really are. Hee-YEAAAH!!
Think http://www.fupenguin.com/ for the grade-school set, kind of.
I LOVE THIS. I mean, I do not mind funny middle-grade books that rely on farts and pratfalls, dumb insults and dumber adults - but it is a special kind of joy to find someone writing real wit for kids.
Johnny Yanok is a great choice to illustrate this festival of irreverence, adding detail and furbelows to already well-described scenes, pumping the page full of pattern and hot midtone colors. His style, a kind of modified mid-century geometric thing, will be familiar to Cartoon Network viewers and the kind of kid who watches the Pixar shorts that come as bonus features on the DVDs.
That's going to help get this book into the right hands - even though it's shaped like a picture book, this thing is clearly for middle grade readers, who sometimes balk at picking up anything that looks like it's for younger kids. So art that scans older is a plus.
Hipster aunties and uncles, take note. This is just the kind of thing you're going to really enjoy watching the nieces and nephews unwrap come holiday time. Thank me later.
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