You can bet your bottom dollar this funny story is the cream of the crop—and the best thing since sliced bread! Award-winning artist Serge Bloch will have kids laughing their heads off at this child’s-eye look at idiomatic expressions like “ants in your pants,” “homework is for the birds,” and “cat got your tongue?” These commonly used sayings make sense in the adult world, but just imagine what a child pictures when she hears it’s “raining cats and dogs!” With witty and wonderful images that mix whimsical line drawings with photographs of inanimate objects, Bloch gives us a unique and sympathetic perspective on a boy’s first day of school where colorful butterflies flutter in our hero’s stomach and a cloud rains on him when he’s “under the weather.” Even the “big cheese” Principal has a body cut out of a block of Swiss. 

"A nonstop barrage of idioms baffles a boy on the first day of school in this small-format book, best for its insouciant illustrations. On each page, the child hears a figure of speech ('My mother said I got up on the wrong side of the bed) and, as the illustrations show, he takes the words literally. Told he'd 'be in a real pickle if we missed the bus,' for example, the boy envisions himself riding with other latecomers in a vehicle made of a pickle slice; this image, like the others, combines a photo with larkish pen-and-ink drawing, and Bloch (I Can't Wait) packs an outsize amount of comedy into each stroke of his pen. Adding minimal facial features, he imbues half a dozen bananas with the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat (the 'top banana' preens above the wannabes). Although the boy's feelings are on target — he fears school, misses his dog, dreads lunch but trades grins with the boy at the next desk — the one-note lines can grow thin; the book may be better browsed than read through. Ages 4 — up." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

An award-winning artist offers a child's-eye look at such idiomatic expressions as ants in your pants and cat got your tongue, providing a unique and sympathetic perspective on a boy's first day of school. Full color.