CLARICE BEAN, THAT'S ME

Arch and precocious, but insidiously charming, Clarice Bean takes an unvarnished look at her family. Conventions of space, typeface, endpapers, and title pages have been dispensed with; Clarice’s relatives and madcap but affable household are created from a variety of fonts, collage effects, and stray bits of dialogue. Clarice shares a room with her little brother Minal (she dumps spaghetti on his head and muses that she should have put tapioca down his shorts) and comments on older sister Marcie’s boy-obsession and older brother Kurt’s penchant for being alone in a room “that smells of socks.” While her mother escapes with scented candles and language tapes in the tub, and her father has a big fancy office, Clarice amuses herself by cheating at cards with her grandfather, whose eyesight isn’t good. There is a sneaky sort of affection present, especially in the endpapers where the family gathers in assorted cozy positions with mordant commentary by Clarice; she could be Eloise, reincarnated for the millennium. Child may be aiming more at adults than at children, but today’s preternaturally ironic readers may find Clarice divine. (Picture book. 6-10)