Bob, Not Bob! by Liz Garton Scanlon (review)

The instruction comes right up front on the cover and title page of this tale of maladies and misunderstanding: it’s “to be read as though you have the worst cold ever.” It’s just such a horrible cold that takes out Little Louie and puts him in bed, where he wants the loving attendance of his mother. However, when he calls for his mom “with his weird, all-wrong, stuffed-up voice,” it keeps sounding like “Bob!”, which brings his dog, Bob, running (“and slobbering”). This is a fond and funny take on the way illness can bring the normally independent to desperately wanting their mommy (“When Little Louie got sick, he felt littler than usual”), and the readaloud instructions make this a perfect cheer-up for a kid tucked up with a cold. Cordell’s scribbly lines are well suited to the bleariness of illness, and they contrast amusingly with the crisp hand-drawn dimensional lettering of Little Louie’s utterings (in which “Bob” meaning “Mom” is identified by the heart forming the space in the O). Brown-skinned Mom is realistically frazzled by her household burdens, but she and Bob (a big gangly spotty pooch) clearly love Louie in sickness and in health. Even the hale and hearty will sympathize with Louie’s neediness, and audiences will love practicing their stuffed-up voices to join in on the choruses of “Bob!”