The Fantastic 5 & 10¢ Store: A Rebus Adventure

J. Patrick Lewis is one of the best-known children’s poets writing today and the author of many celebrated picture books. His books include Doodle Dandies, Please Bury Me in the Library (one of the New York Public Library’s 100 Books for Reading and Sharing), First Dog, coauthored with Beth Zappitello, about a Portuguese water dog who finds a home in the White House, and Kindergarten Cat. He lives in Westerville, Ohio. Learn more at www.jpatricklewis.com.

Valorie Fisher is the author/illustrator of How High Can a Dinosaur Count?, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and When Ruby Tried to Grow Candy. She has contributed the photographs for the beloved Moxy Maxwell books by Peggy Gifford. Ms. Fisher’s titles My Big Brother and My Big Sister—both Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Award winners—were also illustrated with photographs. Ms. Fisher’s photos can be seen in major museums around the world, including the Brooklyn Museum, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. She lives in Cornwall, Connecticut.

After a new store mysteriously appears in town, young Benny Penny investigates the enchanted inventory of flying toasters and the surreal goings-on: The cup said to the saucer, ‘You / Are quite a dish, my dear!’ / The calendar jumped off the wall / Because it was leap year. The thin plot and silly rhymes provide framework for what seems to be the book’s main attraction: a rebus-style text that combines words and pictures. The puzzles are creative (twice is created from the combination of TW and a picture of an ice cube); literal (a chicken picture signifies chicken); and occasionally unclear (is that an alligator or a crocodile?). Fortunately, a full key to the text appears at the back. The computer-manipulated style of Fisher’s mixed-media artwork jars against the Americana setting, and while Lewis makes a good stab at the nonsensical, he is no Edward Lear. The ending will please kids: with Benny’s marketing moxie, customers are soon flooding in to purchase the magical merchandise. Grades 1-2. --Andrew Medlar