I Scream, Ice Cream: A Book of Wordles

Rosenthal (Wumbers, rev. 11/12) has a remarkable knack for clever, participatory wordplay, and here she offers a series of wordles, a term she's coined for phrases that are homophones, as in the book's title I Scream, Ice Cream! Coming up with meaningful and humorous phrases that also happen to sound the same isn't exactly easy. Yet Rosenthal manages to do so again and again -- with crucial assistance from Bloch's gleefully silly mixed-media illustrations. Bloch's art is, in fact, what stages the scene for -- and often illuminates -- Rosenthal's wordle vignettes. Take "Princess cape," for example. With a page turn, readers read "Prince, escape!" and Bloch presents a prince bolting from a cape-wearing -- and quite hideous -- princess. Now and then, a young reader may be hard-pressed to guess the second (or third) wordle. There's a police line-up, for example, with the heading "WHO DID IT?" and an innocent-looking little girl with the caption: "Uh, not her." On the next page, suspects three and four are revealed to be "an otter" (who, unfortunately, isn't very otter-like in appearance) and "a knotter." But stumper or two aside, the antics here -- in word and art -- are laugh-out-loud funny. tanya d. auger