STONE UNDERPANTS

The only thing funnier than underwear? Prehistoric underwear!!

(Bare) necessity may be the mother of invention, but that doesn’t guarantee that one gets it right the first time. It’s the Stone Age, and after chilly cave-dweller Pod informs his father that “I really do need something to keep my bottom warm,” what follows is a series of missteps on the road to success. Naturally, Pod’s father’s first suggestion is that he use stone to make himself some undies. When that leads to a near drowning, the undaunted Pod tries wood, shells, spider webs, mud, and feathers before a woolly mammoth offers up the finest solution. Plenty of visual gags abound in the cartoonish art during Pod’s misadventures, with a highly amused mammoth in the background mirroring young readers’ inevitable delight. But it is Pod’s persistence to engage in trial and error, even in the face of multiple failures, that turns this book from mere Stone Age silliness into a lesson of tackling a problem from multiple angles. Pod and his family are light-skinned, and he has a multiracial group of friends.

A brief but amusing escapade into underwear history.