Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The Boy Who Cried Ninja


Booklist (April 1, 2011 (Vol. 107, No. 15)) Preschool-Grade 2. Naturally, Tim’s folks are having none of his excuses that a ninja snuck in and ate the last piece of cake; that an astronaut absconded with Dad’s hammer; and that a giant squid ate his book bag. So they send him out to rake the leaves and think about his lying ways. But when he decides to take the heat for the pirate who drinks all the tea, the sunburned crocodile who breaks the TV antenna, and the time-traveling monkey who throws pencils at sleeping Grampa, his parents get mad all the same, and it’s back to yard work for punishment. Tim realizes he just can’t win, so he invites over all the ne’er-do-wells getting him in trouble to prove his innocence, and his parents promise to buy him 100 ice-cream cones to say they’re sorry. With goofy, wide-eyed, stick-legged, plump-middled figures and just the sort of lunacy that could have sprung from an impish young imagination, this picture book makes for a cheerful, lightly subversive kids’ point-of-view rejoinder to the lesson of owning up for your actions.

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