This Is Not That Kind of Book by Christopher Healy (review)

Little Red Riding Hood interrupts what's supposed to be an alphabet book: "Sorry, this is a fairy tale." Instead of running into the big bad wolf, they meet a robot, who announces that the cast is now on Mars ("Fairy tales don't happen on Mars!"), and the group quickly disgruntles Hedgible T. Hedgehog waiting for friends in her schoolhouse, only to be interrupted by Captain Knock-Knock, a talking banana from a joke book. The genre whiplash goes on to include a pirate and a detective, until the characters leap out of the book and determine it's "a book about a group of characters who have nothing in common, but who work together to figure out what kind of book they're in." This readaloud mostly takes place in speech bubble dialogue that would be easy to partner-read or try out different voices. Unfortunately, the plot is uninspired, and no great conclusion comes from this mishmash of genres developed in so few pages that characters hardly get introduced before another enters the scene. Regardless, children may enjoy the playful art with characters jumping in and out of the story, and they may look at literary genres with fresh eyes.