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By Mac Barnett,
Illustrated by Dan Santat
Disney-Hyperion, 2010
$16.99, ages 4-8, 40 pages
The cover of this amusing picture book grabs you like a cult B movie and gets you feeling suspense before you've even know why.
There you see a girl in black pigtails gaping at a gigantic robot and frog (which you see reflected in her glasses) as helicopters close in from behind.
Across the front of her jumper the title of the book yells, "Oh No!" in bold capital letters outlined in red.
Did the girl utter those words or was she unable to get them out?
Barnett and Santat take a dramatic story idea and treat it like a sci-fi action flick.
A girl builds a 360-foot robot for her Fifth Grade science fair project, only to see the experiment go terribly wrong as the robot starts to plow down her city, much like the archetypal King Kong.
Santat zooms in on top of the action and scenes sprawl over the fold. Each illustration is letterboxed to appear as if it was formatted for the book from a wide-screen movie, with black bars appearing above and below the pictures.
Before you even get to the title page, you know that disaster has struck. You see the girl's reflection in a storefront window as a TV screen blares the words, "Please Stand By," moments before a program is interrupted by a special report about the robot.
Next you see the girl chasing after the robot, whose gangly arms are flailing around skyscrapers, and see black funnels of smoke rising from the cityscape where the robot has zapped buildings with its laser eye.
The camera momentarily cuts back in time to the science fair to show how the trouble started:
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Ah, you made me smile, dear. ;-)
I suggest resurrecting the Squirrel Majority Leader as a zombie. He can work through the night to solve the crisis!
My running mate is an androgynous simulacrum of Eugene Debs and Emma Goldman who spends most of its time arguing with itself about the role and value of government in effecting meaningful change.
You, sir/ma'am, have my vote!