Dirtball Pete

K-Gr 3—Dirtball Pete is a nice kid who can't help getting messy and stinky. When it's time for him to perform in THE FIFTY STATES AND WHY THEY'RE GREAT! day at school, his mom scrubs him down, dresses him up, and tells him to make her proud. Inevitably, Pete gets filthy while chasing down his blown-away notes, but his confident performance in the show makes his mom proud anyway. This is a pleasant little lesson in not judging a book by its cover, with the didacticism mostly offset by the quirky storytelling and illustrations. The almost-adult humor is layered into the chipper text, with lines like "no one can tell the wind what to do—not a kite, not a sailboat, not a businessman's toupee." The cartoon illustrations look like the Peanuts gang on caffeine: short children with large heads, but with a more kinetic energy than the work of Charles Schulz (Pete's similarity to Pigpen enhances this impression). The message is timeless, the setting modern, with Pete's multicultural class and the parents snapping photos with their phones. One old-fashioned element of the story may bother safety-conscious adults: due to his bulky Pennsylvania costume, Pete rides loose in the back of the station wagon. This story would be useful to support character-education topics like respect, judging others, self-esteem, and so on.—Heidi Estrin, Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel, Boca Raton, FL