MYSTERY RIDE!

“Mystery ride, / Mystery ride, / Do you want / to go on a / Mystery ride? / NO!” The bear-like computer-generated children sing these lines from the back seat of the family car, as the parents drive them from one boring place—the supermarket—to another—the Laundromat—with such stultifying stops as the hardware store, the transfer station and a department store in between. The parents do their best to con the kids by dressing up their errands as a “Mystery Ride,” but the kids aren’t buying it—until the ice-cream stand at the end perks them up. The concept of the mystery ride is intriguing and the boredom evinced by the three children recognizably universal, but this pointless, undeveloped tale goes, like the mystery ride itself, pretty much nowhere. Neither the awkward artwork nor the simple story inspires. “Do you want to go on a Mystery Ride?” Not this one. (Picture book. 4-7)