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HOOVER'S BRIDE by David Small

HOOVER'S BRIDE

by David Small & illustrated by David Small

Pub Date: Sept. 1st, 1995
ISBN: 0-517-59707-1
Publisher: Crown

More rhymed foolery from Small (George Washington's Cows, 1994, etc.), with an ending that may seem cold-hearted to some, and subtexts that don't bear too much scrutiny. When Hoover, a balding, middle-aged bachelor, sees Elektra the vacuum cleaner sweeping up mountains of dust, he falls rapturously in love. They are soon married (``While this seems like the strangest alliance,/I now pronounce you Man and Appliance''), but their honeymoon at the posh Hotel Dunes is interrupted when Elektra runs off with a newlywed power lawn mower from across the hall. Hoover and the mower's distraught spouse have their marriages annulled and live happily ever after; the eloping machines meet a harsher fate, immediately ending up at the city dump. The moral: ``It's good to have humans aboard/When you run out of gas, or run out of cord.'' In the cleanly drawn watercolors Elektra, a small canister model, peeps coyly up from the floor as genteel humans react with comically exaggerated gestures and expressions. As usual, Small displays both sharp wit and a lively imagination, but this is flat next to his other books, which are mostly about the value of being different rather than its perils. (Picture book. 6-8)