RODNEY ROOTLE'S GROWN-UP GRAPPLER AND OTHER TREASURES FROM THE MUSEUM OF OUTLAWED INVENTIONS

Here is a complete collection of forbidden devices,"" reads the hand-lettered, slightly creepy (but not corny) introduction, ""each and every one designed by kids."" And inside you'll final a manic array of precisely delineated, hilariously rendered inventions: Spooky, Anti-Adult, Foul Food, and Anti-Bully inventions; School and Bathroom and Homework inventions; and more. Some are complex Rube-Goldberg contraptions (or, as they'd say in Winn-and-Beadle's Britain, Heath-Robinson contraptions)--like the titular Grown-Up Grappler ""designed and built in 1967 by Rodney Rootle as a way of protecting himself from the soppy greetings and embraces of innumerable aunts and greataunts"". . . which also graces the paperboard cover. Others are as simple and apt as the Pet Dog Werewolf Mask or the Crossbow Spectacles. This is junior high humor, however, in a picturebook format--which seems to go over better in Britain than in the US.