Would I Ever Lie to You? (review)

Our narrator is at the mercy of his older cousin Ed, who "says outrageous things with ease," leaving the poor kid wondering which things are true and which are lies. In the past, Ed has convinced the narrator that his head is shrinking and that there are alligators in Grandma's attic; on the other hand, it turns out that Ed's claims that Aunt Mary has no teeth and that there are trees so big you can drive through them were absolutely true. Now the perplexed narrator faces a piece of pie, unsure whether or not to believe Ed's claim that the dessert is poison. The scansion is wildly haphazard in these tetrameter couplets, making reading a bit of a challenge, but kids will immediately recognize the situation wherein an older kid uses his superior status to play mind games. Ed's got a good array of tales that blend classic kid lies with the unbelievable yet true, and there's enough reveling in crude physicality, especially in Ed's dire warnings about the pie, to ensure readerly snorts of glee. Mixed-media illustrations mine humor from relentless exaggeration, especially in the oversized gaptoothed heads of the young cousins; scenes are often dominated by chaotic and crowded elements, but that adds to the frenetic humor. The best joke of all comes in the finish, when the narrator errs in eating the pie and then succumbs as a result—or does he ("Would I ever lie to you?")? This is an amusing stand-alone work, but it could also be slipped into a folklore unit as a reminder that kids are the best tricksters of all.