Review by New York Times Review
ANYONE who knows children knows they are not timid when it comes to pondering ethical conundrums. Rather, as their routine cry of "No fair!" proves, they live for it. "Brief Thief," by Michaël Escoffier, could serve as the basis for a nursery school moot court. Here are the facts of the case: Leon, a green lizard (some species of chameleon, it appears, though this is unstated), has to "go poo." Unfortunately, he is out of toilet paper. Looking for an alternative - "Leaves? No, they're too prickly. Grass? No, that will be too messy" - Leon spots an old pair of underpants hanging on a tree branch. He pauses momentarily to consider this question of fair use. The briefs, with a red and pink pattern, "might belong to someone," he concedes, but then wonders why someone would leave them in a tree. "And anyway," he concludes, "they're full of holes." In short order, Leon uses the underpants to clean himself, then tosses them into the bushes. This is where things get interesting. I would argue that under the laws of the forest or the jungle or wherever it is Leon lives, he is well within his rights to assume the underwear has been abandoned. Leon, however, is made of squishier stuff. Someone starts speaking to him - his conscience or, as it introduces itself, "the little voice you hear inside your head whenever you get up to something naughty." Leon insists he has a clean bill of moral health but eventually confesses the underwear business. His conscience pounces: "Aha! Now we're getting somewhere! Since when are we allowed to touch other people's things? What do they teach you in school, anyway?" If I were Leon I'd answer, "They teach sharing." But "Brief Thief" has been translated from French (it was published under the more ambiguous and very French-seeming title "Ni Vu Ni Connu" - "Neither Seen Nor Known"), and perhaps France's preschool curriculum is more Randian than our own. At any rate, Leon's conscience orders him to wash the briefs, leave them to dry and "GET LOST!" Leon does this, but Escoffier's story, like a good legal thriller, offers a final twist: Leon's conscience isn't what it appears to be, and in a mostly wordless coda, the book reveals who actually owns the underpants and exactly why they are ridden with holes. The answer made both me and a 5 ½-year-old I borrowed to read the book with (it was her half-birthday) laugh out loud. Truly funny sight gags are a picture-book holy grail, or should be, and Kris Di Giacomo's cartoonish yet painterly illustrations are witty in a way children and adults alike will savor. (Parents who frown on bottom-related humor should be aware that "Brief Thief" could well serve as a gateway drug to "Captain Underpants.") Three other new books delve into equally thorny questions of right and wrong, though with perhaps less Dostoyevskian gusto. "That Is Not a Good Idea!," by the great and prolific Mo Willems - the author and illustrator of the Knuffle Bunny and Pigeon books, among many others - takes the form of a silent movie, complete with title cards. The players: Hungry Fox, Plump Goose and Baby Geese. On-screen, Fox tries to maneuver Goose toward a very large soup pot, while in the audience a flock of hatchlings react to events with a continuing chorus of "That is Not a good idea!" and "That is Really not a good idea!" and so on, which I found Really fun to read aloud. (And I mean loud.) Yet again, there is a nice twist - more Sweeney Todd than D.W. Griffith, but nothing a Grimms-tested child can't handle. I would hope "That Is Not a Good Idea!" might lead to a discussion not just of culinary ethics but also of silent film comedy and, perhaps, for dessert, a Buster Keaton DVD. I was less enamored of "The Highway Rat," by the frequent collaborators Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler ("The Gruffalo," "Room on the Broom"). The titular antihero is an old-school, sword-wielding highway robber, like something out of an all-rodent "Barry Lyndon." Donaldson's rhymes are pleasing to read aloud, but the rat himself turns out to be a rather one-note character and is also, well, a rat. (Please excuse my bias. I was exposed to "Ben" at an early age.) On the other hand, I was glad that for once, a bad guy turns out to be genuinely bad and not merely sad or misunderstood (see: the Grinch and every bully on a Disney Channel). Speaking of misunderstanding, a crucial plot point involving a cave and an echo was too subtly delineated for my borrowed 5 ½-year-old - although the fault may lie with her urban upbringing and an attendant ignorance of cavern acoustics. THE villain of "The Dark" is more abstract: the title character itself is the nightly bane of many children, including this book's young hero, Laszlo. Daniel Handler, writing as Lemony Snicket, does a wonderful job of . . . I was going to write "personifying the dark," but "thingifying" is more like it: "The dark lived in the same house as Laszlo. . . . Sometimes the dark hid in the closet. Sometimes it sat behind the shower curtain. But mostly it spent its time in the basement. All day long the dark would wait in a distant corner. . . . At night, of course, the dark went out and spread itself against the windows and doors of Laszlo's house." The illustrations by Jon Klassen, who just won the 2013 Caldecott Medal for "This Is Not My Hat," are fully up to Handler's lovely-spooky conception, poetic and concrete in equal measure. Their story is set in motion one evening when the bulb in Laszlo's night light goes out; the climax will most likely be the first time young readers are exposed to the old "Uh oh, don't go down the basement steps" horror-movie trope. But as the Gods of Narrative demand, descend Laszlo must. Fortunately, there are no shrieks, no blood, not even a cat leaping gratuitously from a shadow - just a gentle, happy ending as Laszlo and the dark reach a détente. Correction: In the second paragraph, the author should not have made a joke about nursery school moot courts. Any preschool administrator now thinking of instituting a moot court to please parents with visions of Harvard Law School in their eyes should forget anything was ever said. Bruce Handy is a deputy editor at Vanity Fair.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 14, 2013]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Be forewarned-this story from the team behind Rabbit and the Not-So-Big-Bad-Wolf centers on the act of wiping after a poo. Yet it teaches a worthy lesson with sparkling dialogue and an excellent punch line. Goggle-eyed chameleon Leon, out in the forest doing his business, finds himself without any paper and instead uses a pair of underpants that are hanging on a tree. They appear to be abandoned, and "anyway, they're full of holes." Di Giacomo suggests the forest's leaves and trees with splashed green paint, but her main interest is Leon's beautifully abashed expressions. When a disembodied voice addresses Leon-"It's me, your conscience"-his anguished grin gives the lie to his excuses. The voice bullies Leon into restoring things to their original state: "Go on, scrub! Like you mean it!" It turns out that there's someone else in the forest who has a very specific use for those underpants. Escoffier has unusual insight into the psychology of doing something bad and getting caught. Readers will wince along with Leon, and laugh out loud when they find out what the underpants are really for. Ages 4-8. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Leon, a green iguana, is caught with no toilet paper. He has enjoyed a good breakfast and spent the morning in the sun. When nature calls, he hides behind a tree to take care of business and then discovers the empty toilet-paper roll. He considers using leaves or grass to clean himself, but neither of those choices is satisfactory. He spies what he assumes to be a discarded and torn pair of red-dotted underpants that "will do the trick." When he is done, he casts aside the soiled briefs, but then his conscience gets the better of him. He wrestles with the little voice inside that tells him he shouldn't touch other people's property. The argument is typed in alternating fonts. Finally, the repentant lizard washes out the garment and hangs it up to dry. After Leon has headed off to sun himself again, a rabbit dressed as a superhero appears. He retrieves his clothing and flies away, wearing his freshly laundered mask. "'Old underpants full of holes. Indeed!'" Di Giacomo's notable collagelike illustrations, rendered in a natural palette of greens, browns, and blues, succinctly portray Leon's turbulent emotions. His expressive features tell the whole story. This brief adventure teaches an unconventional lesson about listening to one's conscience.-Linda L. Walkins, Saint Joseph Preparatory High School, Boston, MA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Leon the lizard eats his breakfast and suns himself for a spell; then, "Leon has to go poo." But: "OH NO! NO PAPER!" Fortunately, Leon finds a pair of old, holey underpants hanging nearby on a tree. He has a moment of doubt ("They might belong to someone") but decides to go for it. Here's where the proverbial poo hits the fan. After Leon finishes, er, freshening up, he's accosted by a voice claiming to be his conscience ("I'm the little voice you hear inside your head whenever you get up to something naughty"). The disembodied voice berates Leon for his poor judgment and demands that he clean the soiled undies ("Go on, scrub! Like you mean it!"). The book's large pages give Leon's morality play lots of space to unfold. Di Giacomo's expressive illustrations feature a sympathetic and animated spindly limbed, solid-torsoed main character. While author Escoffier's potty humor is uninhibited (oh, those French!), the illustrator's restraint is admirable, leaving less savory images up to the imagination. Instead, she plays up the joke: after a freaked-out Leon slinks away, the owner of the underpants is revealed to be a caped rabbit dressed all in red, a superhero who needs the holey underwear for an entirely different purpose. So, children, if you're going to wear upcycled undies on your head, make sure you know where they've been. And for superheroes' sakes, don't ever leave the house without some wipes. kitty flynn (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A sparely told French knee-slapper features a chameleon, a rabbit and a pair of repurposed undies. Twice repurposed, as it turns out. Having enjoyed his customary breakfast fly, green Leon "has to go poo"--and discovers too late that there's no paper. Happily, he finds a pair of red patterned underwear "full of holes," hanging from a twig. But hardly has he chucked the soiled briefs into a bush than an insistent little voice drives him to repent of the theft, scrub the rag clean and hang it up again. "Since when are we allowed to touch other people's things? What do they teach you in school, anyway?" That voice of conscience, as it turns out, actually belongs to an annoyed rabbit in cape and costume. He emerges from hiding to reclaim the garment, tug it over his (wait for it) ears (the "holes" turn out to be eyeholes) and fly off. The text, printed in different colors and typefaces depending on the speaker, is placed over minimally detailed outdoor scenes created with splatters and thin layers of paint, featuring skinny-limbed figures with beady, expressive eyes. A natural for fans of Jon Klassen's terse creature capers. (Picture book. 5-8)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
