THE VERY UGLY BUG

In this notably unsuccessful take on the “I don’t want to stand out” theme, a bug—colorful but not particularly ugly in the cartoon illustrations—brushes off her friends’ appreciative comments and dresses herself to look like them, but changes her tune after repulsing a predatory bird. Not only is the Lesson sledge-hammered home in the agenda-centered text (“Now I love the way I look!” exclaims the triumphant bug, before going off to mate with a dazzled suitor), but Pichon, along with adding inane comments in dialogue balloons, plasters several pictures with descriptive labels for viewers who have somehow missed the idea that the bug is supposed to be hideous. A similar premise gets more effective treatment in Andrew Clements’s Big Al (1988), illustrated by Yoshi, and, more recently, in Graeme Base’s Jungle Drums (2004). (Picture book. 6-8)