Even More Parts

September 1, 2004
The bug-eyed boy from Parts and More Parts is back in Even More Parts: Idioms from Head to Toe by Tedd Arnold as he frets about more figures of speech. With a toy superhero, tank and dinosaur, he illustrates the wackiness of many expressions taken at "face" value. Underneath the main illustrations, the toys interact with each other: when the boy protagonist demonstrates "I went to pieces," his body parts strewn on the sidewalk, the dragon tells the toy superhero below, also a pile of limbs, "Pull yourself together!" as the disembodied toy hero announces, "I came unglued." .

January 1, 2005
Gr 1-3 -The boy from "Parts" (1997) and "More Parts" (2001, both Dial) returns. Here, he is preparing to go to school. Each page features a phrase that includes an idiom, along with a humorous illustration of the child literally living up to that particular expression. For example, for "I lost my head," the headless youngster wanders around with arms outstretched looking for his missing body part, which is partially concealed behind a chair. Along the bottom of the page, his toys illustrate additional figures of speech ("It makes my head spin," "I laughed my head off," "My head is in the clouds"). Created with colored pencils and watercolor washes, the bright, manic artwork features pop-eyed characters drawn with a loose, squiggly line. The rhyming, which has always been a weak point in the books, is kept to a minimum while the chaos is kept at the previous high level. Arnold's art manages to keep the gross-out factor reasonable while producing plenty of laughs. Even libraries without the first two titles will find this a fun choice for sharing aloud and for tempting independent readers." -Marge Loch-Wouters, Menasha's Public Library, WI"

Copyright 2005 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2005
Arnold's third book of idioms relating to the human body is similar to "Parts" and "More Parts". Each illustration shows what a boy fears might happen if "I'm tongue-tied" or "I sang my heart out." The colored-pencil and watercolor illustrations feature an exaggerated boy with huge bulging eyeballs--details kids might find hilarious.

(Copyright 2005 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)