HIS MOTHER’S NOSE

Dedicated to the people who have made them who they are, Maloney and Zekauskas’s (Belly Button Boy, 2000, etc) latest offering celebrates the fact that there is “. . . a little bit of everybody in everybody.” From his birth, no one saw Percival Puddicombe as himself. His mother looked at him and saw her nose, his father saw his eyes, and his relatives each claimed they saw their own features in him. Even Percival couldn’t see anything else. When he looked in the mirror, a crowd of relatives stared back at him. Then, one day, his mother’s nose, his father’s eyes, and all of his relatives’ body parts disappeared, along with Percival, to his grandparents’ house where he was always just Percival. There he learns the important lesson that he is a part of everyone who has come before . . . but that he will also always be his own special person. And when he returns with the family photo album, everyone finds a little bit of themselves in its pages . . . literally. The illustrations are sure to appeal to youngsters’ funny bones, especially when the body parts start disappearing! Skinny, knobby-kneed figures sport dotted or striped stockings and ties and wide-eyed expressions of surprise, even his grandmother. Adult readers are sure to chuckle over the details tucked in for their amusement (pay special attention to his uncle’s bookcase). With its humor and gentle message of genetics, this is a story to be shared whenever the family photos get pulled off the shelf. (Picture book. 4-8)