The No-Nothings and Their Baby [Hardcover]

Anne Mazer (Author), Ross Collins (Illustrator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Intellectual kin to James Marshall's The Stupids, Dav Pilkey's Dumb Bunnies and not to be confused with Michele Sobel Spirn's Know-Nothings, Bertram Reliable Butternut No-Nothing and his wife Doriana Hiccup Whatsername No-Nothing seem unlikely parent material. Yet they confidently pull up to a fast-food window and request the "speedy delivery" of their baby. After being redirected to the hospital next door, Bertram and Doriana meet their infant daughter and learn about bottle-feeding: " 'That looks good,' Mr. No-Nothing said. 'I'll have one.' 'Me too,' said his wife." Later, they hop into the tub for a "baby shower." Mazer's (The Accidental Witch) deadpan dialogue sets up silly sight gags that reveal the adult No-Nothings' blithe ignorance and their baby's unforeseen smarts. Collins stocks the images with visual jokes, like a "5TU PID" license plate and upside-down tulips in a vase. He pictures the couple as gawky, big-eared twits with dopey grins, who never wear more than one shoe between them. The vignettes have a campy glee occasioned by the No-Nothings' mismatched clothes, and a nervous energy amplified by the slapstick child-rearing. This book confirms that adults are dangerously dim and that daughter knows best; however, the baby doesn't commiserate with the audience, so there's no sympathetic character. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Kindergarten-Grade 3-The No-Nothings, like Sue Denim's "Dumb Bunnies" (Scholastic) and Harry Allard's "Stupids" (Houghton), are not too swift. They diaper their newborn's head, arms, and legs instead of her bottom and they try to feed her french fries. Luckily a nurse intervenes and parents and Betty enjoy their bottles. At home they try to put the baby in the shower for a surprise baby shower but the neighbors save the day. Unfortunately, no one is there to stop them from piling into the stroller with Betty and launching themselves down a hill. It is Betty who, escaping injury, is shown phoning for help. The text, full of bold print and colored type, is enhanced by the exuberant cartoons. In their outlandish outfits, the No-Nothings twist and caper across the pages while wide-eyed Betty looks alternately bemused and long suffering. The book is visually lively and well laid out, but ultimately tries too hard to be funny. The stiffer posing of the "Dumb Bunnies" and the "Stupids," who appear against relatively flat picture planes, coupled with their matter-of-fact texts in staid type heighten their absurdity. There is also something unsettling about these parents who are continually placing their infant in harm's way. For the slapstick humor that kids love, stick with these earlier favorites.
Karen James, Louisville Free Public Library, KY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 4 and up
  
• Hardcover: 40 pages
• Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books; 1ST edition (August 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0590680498
• ISBN-13: 978-0590680493
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 9.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,878,657 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Quite a lot of Anne Mazer's writing education took place while she was unconscious. Her parents wanted desperately to become writers and made themselves get up at 4:00 a.m. Every morning in order to have writing time before their three young children awoke. The first thing Anne heard every day was two big, noisy electric typewriters. The furious sound of typing was her childhood wake-up music. During the day, her parents endlessly discussed ideas, plot, and character, and before she was seven years old, Anne knew about revisions, first and second drafts, and rejection slips. It was like growing up in a twenty four hour, seven day a week writer's boot camp.

In order to escape from her parents' obsession with writing, Anne turned to books. She was an avid reader from an early age and credits her love of reading for her writing career. Her favorite works were fantasy, fairy tales, historical fiction, humor, realistic fiction, and adventure. Her other interests were language, art, history, and science. At the age of twelve, she wanted to be an actress, a ballerina and a nuclear physicist. These careers were rapidly eliminated as she realized that a) she couldn't dance, b) she couldn't act; and c) she hated math.

Although at the time Anne thought writing was nothing but a nuisance, she now considers herself very lucky to have grown up with two aspiring writers. She learned a lot about discipline, perseverance and dedication to a craft from witnessing her parents' struggle. They eventually became successful and award-winning young adult novelists.

It took Anne a long time to figure out that she, too, wanted to be a writer. During early adulthood, she worked as an au pair, a bank teller, a pill bottle labeler, a receptionist, an English tutor, and an administrative assistant, as well as other jobs that she was ill-suited for. She attended three universities, spent several years in Paris, traveled throughout Europe, and worked in Boston and New York City.

Anne's "eureka" moment about writing came while she prepared a research report for one of her bosses. As she lovingly polished each sentence, and meticulously organized the paragraphs, she realized that no one really cared how beautifully she wrote about the latest models of air-conditioners. Except her, of course.

Using her parents' model of daily writing and discipline, she began to write. It took her seven years to publish her first book, a picture book inspired by her then two year old son, Max.

Anne is the mother of an adult son and daughter. Over the last twenty years, she has written over forty-five books for young readers. She has enough ideas to last for another quarter century and hopes that she will be writing for a very long time.

Fun Facts About Anne Mazer

* Her favorite foods are popcorn, rice pudding and blueberries.
* When she was a kid, she would sometimes read up to ten books a day.
* If she had magic powers, she'd choose invisibility.
* She painted the rooms in her house yellow, orange, and violet.
* One of her favorite childhood books was The Twilight of Magic, by Hugh Lofting.
* When Anne was a teenager, her room was so messy that she needed a map to get from the door to the bed. (sort of)
* In school Anne often flunked her favorite creative subjects, like writing and art.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars A silly book, February 9, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The No-Nothings and Their Baby (Hardcover)

In this whimsical tale, it hard to know who the parents are and who the baby is. The No-nothings are a crazy and educationally-challenged family couple who picked their own silly names and don't really know how to have a baby. This is evident when the couple visit a drive thru with "speedy delivery" in order to have their first child. When the child arrives, she ends up taking care of the parents being the obvious genius that she is. This is a silly book that will appeal to younger readers for that reason. The illustrations are cartoon-like and show the messes the No-Nothings get themselves into making one wonder how anyone could be so silly.