TOO PURPLEY!

Fussy dressers, this one’s for you! “NOT THESE CLOTHES!” hollers a pigtailed, underwear-clad narrator, her bellow stretching across a double-page spread to a mom-like figure holding a towering pile of options. The girl tries and rejects each outfit in swift, glorious, rhyming, upper-case complaint: “Too purpley, too tickly, / too puckery, / too prickly. / Too itchy, / too scratchy, / too stitchy, / too matchy!” Too strappy’s covered in buckles; too baggy’s a paper sack. Leloup’s digital illustrations are two-dimensional but energetic, her protagonist a vehement preschooler with a Charlie Brown–shaped head. A wee turtle companionably echoes the outfit changes, as does the background wallpaper. This smorgasbord of colors and patterns approaches garishness, but only the too stripey spread glares painfully (and even the character shuts her eyes in disgust). It’s too bad the last page isn’t more harmonious in hue, as the girl finally (and inexplicably—but isn’t that how it works?) declares a jumper over jeans and turtleneck to be “So comfy! Just right.” Clothing-decision screamers and their caretakers will relate and laugh. (Picture book. 2-5)