MRS. PICCOLO'S EASY CHAIR

This tale of a ravenous easy chair starts out innocently enough: Mrs. Piccolo and her billowy, cheese-puff-devouring chair enjoy each other’s company—the chair so likes Mrs. Piccolo it sometimes won’t let her go. When Mrs. Piccolo shuffles off to the supermarket, though, the chair follows at a distance, intent on snagging a bag or two of cheese puffs. First a policeman tries to write the chair a ticket—“We can’t have easy chairs strolling down the streets without a license”—and the chair swallows him up in its voluminous cushioning. Same goes for the store manager when he tries to deny the chair entrance: “Can’t you read?” he said, pointing to a sign on the door. “No easy chairs!” Slurp-gulp, and the manager joins the policeman somewhere in the stuffing. The same fate awaits a couple of rambunctious children who won’t stop bouncing on the chair, and their mother, who has an interest in their whereabouts. All are belched out when the chair gets home. The policeman, the manager, and the mother play dumb about the preposterous proceedings when Mrs. Piccolo returns to find them and her chair on the sidewalk outside her house; they don’t want to admit they were taken in by a chair. This sly swipe at both authority and disobedience has on its side child’s-sized absurdity, and pleasurably gaudy artwork from Greenseid. (Picture book. 4-8)