Bugs in My Hair! by David Shannon (review)

With the academic year nicely underway, what better time to turn to a perennial schoolhouse plague—head lice. The ginger-haired narrator is under attack, and he suffers not only from rampant itching but also from rampant embarrassment ("Oh, the shame! The humiliation!"). His mother is frantic and he's understandably nervous at the thought of various home remedies and outdated advice—harsh chemical "bombs," convict-style buzz cuts, mayonnaise. Fortunately, Mom does her research (surprisingly, not on the internet), the boy gets an oily treatment, and his locks are once more all his own. Shannon's kid-friendly approach, sensitive but zany, will make this the go-to book for similar sufferers. The featured lice step straight out of a kid's worst anxiety dream, huge and arrogant and wildly oversized, draped over the boy's head like a floppy beret, playing with their buddies in a scalp-infesting jug band, or hanging out on the couch with a magazine and cigar. While the loony exaggeration of the illustrations set a better-to-laugh-than-cry tone, the text sneaks in a fair amount of reliable and realistic information: the word "lousy" comes from louse, the eggs are called nits, the lice are after blood, and, sorry to say, it may take a couple of tries to rid a head of all the pests. Hilarious and consoling, this title should find a home in every school nurse's office and, unfortunately, all too many private residences as well.