School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-3-This book opens to an ominous spread of a dark and rainy night; a large stone house; and a pale, thin boy in a black suit. The rhyming text tells the plight of this child, Mucumber McGee, who has missed lunch and dinner and is very hungry. He finds one lone hot dog in the back of the icebox and consumes half of it before his sister steps in to deliver a lecture on the hazards of eating raw meat. Mucumber spends the rest of the book dramatically awaiting his death, until Mother arrives. "Sweet Mucumber, don't worry./If you'd only looked,/the package says clearly:/Hot dogs are precooked!" While the text gets a little over-the-top, the illustrations, full of dark shadows and threatening details, are humorously macabre-the gothic figures in the old portraits are always eating something unexpected like pancakes or a turkey leg. Mucumber's faithful pet lizard also helps to keep the mood from getting too heavy. For the youngest fans of dark humor.-Julie Roach, Cambridge Public Library, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.