A hilarious dialogue between parent and child takes readers deep into the murk and stench of one boy's messy room. This tale starts with a mess and ends with a bang. Full color.

"Lichtenheld's (What Are You So Grumpy About?) rhyming story opens with a parental rant against a messy room (for seven spreads), and continues with a child's passionate defense of the same. In the opening spread, a mother towers over a spectacled boy bellowing: 'Look at this room,/ it's in such distress,/ you'd have to clean up/ just to call it a mess.' Each ensuing full-bleed spread shows an increasingly chaotic scene. Lichtenheld's illustrations abound with humorous touches likely to appeal to young readers: a mouse munches from the remnants of a lunch plate, dirty underwear spins on the ceiling fan, an under-the-bed monster lies dead from eating the boy's socks. When the parents demand the boy clean up, he protests: 'Mom, Dad,/ you don't understand./ It's not random filth,/ everything's planned!' Insisting that his studies require the mess, he goes on to explain his long-term science experiments, which include bug family observations, centrifugal force and paleontology: 'Those clothes aren't heaped up just because I'm a pig,/ I'm actually creating an archaeological dig' (an illustration labels layers of clothing as Kindergarten, 1st Grade, 2nd Grade etc. on which the boy rests leisurely while his parents, dressed as archeologists, dig through the debris). The final experiment he exhibits causes an explosion so severe that the room's entire contents, including the family, end up outside in the yard (the boy finally agrees to 'make an experiment of cleaning my room!'). The rhymes may not be memorable, but youngsters will likely find many of the grossout details amusing. All ages." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)