From School Library Journal
Grade 1-3-Fans of Slugs! (1983), Bugs! (1997), and Skunks! (2001, all Little, Brown) will welcome this latest addition to Greenberg's gross-out canon. A boy and his terrier have no problem with wrestling squids or battling sharks, but they balk at snakes. Naturally, they are beset by every possible variety, at every possible turn. There are snakes heaped under the bed and on the stairs, and, "With a herculean grasp,/A multicolored asp/Nonchalantly shimmies up a wall." The poetry flows easily and is filled with inventive alliteration and quirky humor: "A speckled anaconda/Steals the family Honda/And races down the driveway in reverse." There is some challenging vocabulary ("pyroclastic," "phosphoresce"), but children will likely be more than willing to make the stretch. Munsinger's watercolor illustrations strike the right balance between cute and creepy as boy and dog try to evade the slithery serpents. Not an essential purchase, but fun, particularly if the other titles are popular.
Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
PreS-Gr. 1. "Tangled like spaghetti / Slithery and sweaty." The author and the illustrator of
Bugs! (1997) and
Skunks! (2001) present another hilarious book with a slapstick rhyme, this one about snakes taking over a small boy's world. The creepy creatures start off as a heap under his bed; then they slink down the stairs, shimmy up the walls, hide, and jump out of books and cabinets. Words and pictures wallow in the shudders. Maybe snakes do have some uses: as garden hoses, for cleaning ears, as nifty stethoscopes. But just as the boy is getting used to the invaders, he opens up the shutter to find a huge glaring eye, and then a great, terrifying boa squishes him in its coils. Is that final close-up a capture or an embrace? Munsinger's ink-and-watercolor images extend the silliness. They are packed with nonsense detail and yet clear and accessible for preschoolers, who will recognize the creepy delight of slimy monsters hissing in their ears.
Hazel RochmanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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