HALFWAY HANK

A lad gets around a predilection for doing things halfway in this jocular ditty. Hank A. Mezzomezzo’s lawn is half-mown, his bedroom tidy on just one side; he wears but one skate and cuts figure fours on it. When his town’s Hoe-Down Days roll around, he creates chaos in the egg race by trying to use a half-spoon, and discovers that half of a canoe just won’t float. Davis supplies freckled figures with his trademark oversized, pop-eyed heads. Hank starts out with a confident look, loses his grin after a succession of misadventures, then finally regains it after figuring out that all he has to do to finish a hundred meter race (thus also appeasing his steaming big sister Demi) is to convince himself that it’s a two hundred meter race. It works like a charm: “When he reached the halfway mark, / Hank passed it like a missile! / The judge was so surprised, / He blew his nose and picked his whistle.” No overt moralizing here, but young readers with Hank-like habits will surely finish the whole thing. (Picture book. 6-8)