Wumbers

Double-page spreads feature random characters speaking in "wumbers" ("Would you like some honey 2 swee10 your tea?" "Yes, that would be 1derful"). This might strike readers as more innovative if they weren’t already replacing syllables with numbers in their text messages, but the humor of Lichtenheld's cartoon illustrations is likely to grab their attention. Exaggerated facial expressions offer picture clues that are even more fun to decode.

Readers will be “el8ed” by this clever collection of “1derful” wordplays. Each spread features different subject matter, from a boy napping with his dog (“pure con10tment”) to a girl playing the tuba (“2t!”), emphasizing that the opportunity for wumbers is everywhere. The format of interchanging numbers for word syllables will challenge and inspire kids to make up their own wumbers. Tom Lichtenheld’s expressive, playful artwork is half of the joke. In one spread, for example, a delighted-looking boy holding a red balloon floats up and away as a balloon salesman says to the boy’s mother, “4give me, 4 this is bel8ed, but it seems once again I have overinfl8ted.”

The two kids and a dog on the cover spell things out for us in dialogue bubbles: “It’s a book!” “It’s a game!” “It’s words cre8ed with numbers!” So we’re prepared to decode the linguistic volley that begins on the endpapers and continues on the title page, right into the book itself, as double-page spreads show conversations between random characters speaking in “wumbers” (“Would you like some honey 2 swee10 your tea?” “Yes, that would be 1derful.”) This might strike young readers as more innovative if they weren’t already replacing syllables with numbers in their own texting, but the humor of Lichtenheld’s cartoon illustrations is likely to grab their attention. Exaggerated facial expressions deftly offer picture clues that will be even more fun to decode. There’s no real story here -- each double-page spread is a self-contained scene, unrelated to the illustration that comes before or after it. In this respect, it’s more like a riddle book, a fact that also may add to its child appeal (though once the riddles have been solved there might not be much here to inspire a return trip). kathleen t. horning