In One Ear, Out the Other

December 1, 2010

Gr 1-4-In Another Mouth to Feed, a one-eyed monster with a cat head and birdlike body learns that a new baby is coming. When his father says, "Ah, yes, another mouth to feed," Harvey imagines the baby as an eyeless, ravenous mouth that would "stare at Harvey as if it were staring at LUNCH!" Text and illustrations depict the baby zooming in to eat the crib, table, toys, house, garage, cat and parents. Harvey screams, "NO! You're eating us out of house and home!" When Harvey's parents bring the baby home from the hospital, he sees that "The baby IS cute....until dinner time." In One Ear presents Bud, a hyperactive monster with three eyes, rabbit ears, and a birdlike body. Illustrations exude movement on a spread showing Bud outdoors "climbing, falling, swimming, hiding, shouting, running." Indoors he sits in the midst of clutter playing a video game. Adults' words literally go into one of his ears and out the other, resulting in the creature missing sox, birthdays, and lessons at school. He is sad to discover that he wasn't invited to a party until his father sends a text message: "We've been inviting you to the party for a week. But you never heard us." Bud then puts socks in one ear to keep the words in. Each idiom is defined on the concluding page. Readers will pore over the varied fonts and the richly detailed woodblock illustrations that evoke the monsters' dusty, desert neighborhood and magnify the text in these fresh additions for picture-book collections.-Laura Scott, Farmington Community Library, MI

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