Me Want Pet! by Tammi Sauer and illustrated by Bob Shea (Simon and Schuster, 2012) is the story of a cave boy who wants a pet. He tries a wooly mammoth, a saber-toothed tiger, and a dodo bird, and none of them seems right. How will he get a pet?!
The humor is obvious, given the list of of animals he’s trying to adopt as a pet (although young children won’t get the references to extinct animals) and the end result (how he gets what he wants) is likewise silly.
I can’t talk about this book, though, without mentioning my own bias against a book depicting a cave man as an unintelligent, grammatically incorrect being. I also don’t like books for kids with incorrect grammar (even if the narrator is ELMO, whom I especially dislike) so I was biased against this book from the title alone. That said, there is obvious kid appeal in both the desire to have a pet, the humor of the pets the boy chooses, the playful crayon-like illustrations by Bob Shea, who is also the illustrator of our perennial favorites about Dinosaur (Dinosaur vs Bedtime and Dinosaur vs the Potty, for example). As the humorous book it is, it widely succeeds. For me, I’d rather give it a pass.
Kid’s thoughts: He liked it.
Nominations for the Cybils are open! As a first-round panelist, I get to read all the nominated fiction picture books, those published between October 16, 2011 and October 15, 2012. My son (turning 5 tomorrow!) and I enjoy watching nominations come in, and we’re always excited when we see a book we’ve already enjoyed show up on the list! Some he’s really excited to read because the title is so interesting or the cover illustrations are intriguing. We read this book earlier in the year but didn’t have a chance to post about it then.