MR. AND MRS. GOD IN THE CREATION KITCHEN

Another folksy take on the Biblical creation story from the publishers of Phyllis Root’s Big Momma Makes the World (2003, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury). Here, Wood casts Mr. and Mrs. God as cooks with clashing styles; having made a massive sun, Mr. God enthusiastically assembles roaring monsters to populate Mrs. God’s cool, smaller Earth. “They’re hideous,” she complains. “What were you thinking?” Mr. God obligingly blasts them out of existence, but then miffs Mrs. God again by creating a pelican (“Look at that beak!”) that scoops up her colorful, just-decanted rainbow of fish. Opening with an empyrean kitchen full of pots bobbing around an oven “big enough to roast a star,” and closing with two bare, decidedly Neanderthal-ish people rising up from a cookie sheet, Ering’s full-bleed, broadly brushed scenes feature a pair of gnomish elders floating in space amidst kitchenware and bowls of animal parts. Not exactly canonical, but a lighthearted way to get young readers thinking about creation through collaborative effort. (Picture book. 7-9)