Mr. Chickee's Funny Money (review)

While Curtis' The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 (BCCB 1/96) begins as a lighthearted family drama before shifting gears to explore weighty issues, his newest offering spins in the opposite direction, beginning with a boy mourning the death of his best friend and then shifting into a wackily comic detective story. There are clues that readers needn't worry overmuch about the permanence of Steven's friend's death—the playful use of language here, an overblown sense of drama there, to say nothing of the utter lack of sensitivity shown by the government agents who seem to have sent his friend to a watery grave. Steven's story begins when Mr. Chickee, an elderly blind man, gives him a quadrillion-dollar bill with a picture of James Brown where the face of a dead president should be. Steven is convinced the bill is real; it turns out that he's right, and the feds want it back. In fact, it turns out that most of Steven's outrageous takes on the world are real, making for many laugh-out-loud moments as he speculates about the weirdness of adults, hypnotizes them with techniques learned from his detective books, and consults a dictionary that continually finds new ways to insult him. Steven's story zips along like a prose comic book; the pacing of both plot points and snorts keeps pages turning. Curtis blends Calvin and Hobbes with Bill Cosby's Russell to create savvy Steven, who outsmarts government agents, embarrasses his dad, and befuddles his mother all in a single outpouring of his infallible, um, logic. Many of the jokes play to adults as well as kids, but Steven's continual asides and observations are pure kid-think, making this a great choice for family readalouds. (Oh, and Steven's friend, who turns out to be a slobbery dog named Zoopy, isn't dead after all, just in case you were worried.)