WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM, CLARICE BEAN?

The indomitable heroine of two previous picture books returns to provide readers with her own take on environmentalism: “Nature is something I know lots about. We’ve got lots of it in our backyard.” Joined with her old nemesis, Robert Granger, by her new nemesis, the humorless Mrs. Wilberton, on a school project about snails and worms, she nevertheless manages to put her own individual stamp on it when her brother Kurt stages a sit-in to protest the cutting down of a neighborhood tree. Child’s signature style (Clarice Bean, Guess Who’s Babysitting, 2001, etc.), which combines cartoony line-and-watercolor figures with photographic collage, is, if possible, even more unrestrained than in her previous outings. Mrs. Wilberton looks like a spiky cross between Viola Swamp and Ms. Frizzle (her glasses bristle with malevolent energy), while Clarice’s businessman father appears complete with five o’clock shadow. The typeface is fully integrated with the overall design—each character speaks in an individualized font—and frequently spirals wildly over the page, even as the story itself goes wackily over the top. Clarice’s precocious voice is nearly perfect, as she parrots half-understood adult phrases in her own narration: “Dad would much rather cook for a living but he’s up to his ears in the wheeling and dealing business and someone’s got to bring home the bacon.” At the end, Clarice Bean declares herself an ecowarrior, and while child readers are likely to be as unclear on that concept as Clarice herself is, the busy illustrations, the frenetic pacing, and the crazed good humor with which Clarice’s whole family involves itself in the protest will elicit (though less reluctantly) the same praise given by Mrs. Wilberton: “Well done, Clarice Bean!” (Picture book. 6-9)