MUCUMBER MCGEE AND THE HALF-EATEN HOT DOG

Loehr matches irregularly metered verse to shadowy Charles Addams–style illustrations for his debut—and both are wrong for his lightly comical tale of a peckish lad who eats part of a raw hot dog, then panics when his sister tells him he’ll probably die. “ ‘DIE?’ said Mucumber. / ‘Oh my goodness golly gee. / I was simply hungry— / I was as hungry as can be.’ ” Pale-faced, sad-looking and clad in bowtie, jacket and short pants, Mucumber roams an elegantly furnished mansion with his pet lizard, until at last his mother finds him, lovingly informs him that he’s in no danger since hot dogs are precooked, and then offers a sumptuous repast of beans and plum cake, with pictures as overwrought as the text, this cuts no mustard next to Mo Willems’s Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog (2004). (Picture book. 6-8)