Hooey Higgins and the Tremendous Trousers by Steve Voake (review)

After his lively debut in Hooey Higgins and the Shark (BCCB 4/12), young Hooey is back for another adventure. A successful routing of the class bully (Hooey convinces him to unknowingly sit on an anthill, causing him to be bitten and to doff his pants) and a class contest centered on safety prompt Hooey, his pal, Twig, and his older brother, Will to invent TremTrows, short for Tremendous Trousers that will protect the wearer from harm. The kids have high hopes for the bubble-wrap-stuffed sweatpants, especially after they add bottles of cola and mint-filled balloons which will, in theory, inflate like air bags when the mints hit the cola. Unfortunately, during their contest entry’s public presentation, Twig accidentally releases all the mints at once when he is hit in, erm, a sensitive area with a soccer ball, resulting in a cola-soaked audience and a failure to win the prize. The shock of the explosion does, however, cure a small student’s persistent hiccups, and the student’s grateful father rewards Hooey with three tickets to the local fair. Voake excels at quick pacing and pithily hilarious description (“Twig looked bewildered, as if he was having one of those dreams where meerkats ride bicycles and juggle with melons”), and this well-written romp will appeal especially to the boys who goof off in the back of the classroom with rubber bands and paperclips. Dodson’s monochromatic ink line and wash art features exaggerated figures and a scribbly, spattery look that complements the rowdy storyline, and frequency of the illustrations will further entice reluctant readers. It’s hard to beat exploding pants for sheer kid appeal, and this would make a LOL-inducing readaloud as well as a splendid readalone selection.