WHATEVER YOU DO...

An odd visitor disrupts a household’s morning routine.

A fairly ordinary, pale-skinned family—three children, no-nonsense Mummy, and stubble-faced Daddy—are eating breakfast when there’s a knock at the door. Mummy senses trouble: “If it’s a naughty-looking little gnome with a magical-looking hat…whatever you do…don’t let him in!” Daddy doesn’t listen, and a wiry, stick figure–like fellow sporting an oversize purple cone atop his head scurries in and dances a jig on their table. Mummy tosses him unceremoniously out the window, but he’s far from done disrupting their morning. A spell book tumbles down the chimney, a child reads from it (despite Mummy’s warning!), and everything in the house turns into food—including Daddy and two of the kids! (“Look, just whatever you do, don’t start eating yourselves,” Mummy says—advice that that not everyone heeds). The puzzled group chases the gnome into a hurly-burly of colorful chaos, hoping to resolve their situation. The wacky challenges precipitated by an uninvited guest recall the Cat in the Hat’s escalatory antics, but Pearson perfectly incorporates his own visual vocabulary of playfully peculiar domesticity—so integral to his Hilda series—into this busy, vibrant picture book. Kids will thrill at the increasing absurdity of the family’s situation, while caregivers will appreciate the parents’ attempts to hold things together amid the turmoil and clean up the mess when the party is over.

Appealingly strange, laugh-out-loud funny, and guaranteed to have children clamoring for more.