DON’T FORGET YOUR ETIQUETTE!

“So if you’re smart, you’ll read my book / Of modern children’s etiquette. / If you don’t, I’m sad to say— / Your life will be pathetiquette.” So opines Miss Information, who goes on to offer chancy guidance for a range of situations, from the proper way to drink from a gravy boat to keeping the babysitter locked up, from shaking hands or kissing (“With emperors and empresses / You only kiss their cheeks. / With giant thrashing octopi / You only kiss their beaks”) to “correct” behavior in museums and libraries. Most of the 20 rhymed entries are prefaced with a perspective-setting quotation from Emily Post or some like authority, and all are surrounded by Westcott’s exuberant cartoon young folk happily acting out before a corps of befuddled grown-ups. Joining a spate of recent jocular takes on the topic (see, for instance, Alan Katz’s Are You Quite Polite? Silly Dilly Manners Songs, 2006), this may make its case for civilized behavior indirectly, but even dimmer readers will “getiquette.” (Picture book/poetry. 7-11)