Chu's Day (review)

It's a terrific day of outings for Chu, the young panda, as he and his parents go to the library, a local diner, and the circus. Chu has a bit of a sensitive nose, and it's clear from his parents' looks of dread as they ask him repeatedly "Are you going to sneeze?" that his nasal outbursts can be fearsome indeed. When a cloud of dust gets him going at the library, his "aah-aaah-Aaaah-" buildup fortunately ends as a dud; same thing happens with the powder of pepper in the diner. At the circus, however, he finally can't hold it in, and his sneeze upends the entire gala and rips through the town like a hurricane, leaving chaos in its wake. The simple text makes the most of the windup/false alarm joke, and Chu's sweetly understated responses ("Oops," says Chu matter-of-factly after destroying the landscape) add an additional humorous fillip. It's Rex's art that really maximizes the comic potential here, though; the rich, saturated paints make his animal-inhabited world pop, and there's delicious detail (mice using computer terminals in the card catalogue drawers) and eloquent portraiture (the diner is a cross between Hopper's Nighthawks and the cantina scene in Star Wars). The stricken faces on Chu's parents forewarn readers that the sneeze is going to be a Big Deal, and the two wordless spreads of ongoing destruction (which even roars back to wreck the library and the diner) are a splendid climax. This will work best for close lapsitting, since kids will want to pore over the intricately fantastical pictures (invite them to hunt for the little snail that appears throughout), and it will delight any kid who warms to a bit of innocent mayhem.