SKATEBOARD MOM

Odanaka’s tale has a good measure of whimsy—a mom hijacks her son’s skateboard, which he has just received as a birthday present, and sets about strutting her stuff, revealing a hidden skateboarding past—but the poetry can be disappointing. The rhymes have off-beats with all the fluidity of square wheels—“ ‘See you later,’ she said, skipping out the door. / ‘See you later,’ she said, not a single word more”—and the writing can display a certain rigor mortis: “Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack / ‘Mom, can I have my skateboard back?’ / Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack. / ‘Please, may I have my skateboard back?’ ” Yet, the nutty story survives even these inadequacies. Adinolfi’s art, on the other hand, is steadily fun—offbeat in the right ways—with the characters looking like they’ve been ironed onto the page, somehow frozen in motion. (Picture book. 4-7)