Publisher: Chronicle Books

Release Date: March 2013

Price: $8.95

Creator: Andy Riley

Format: 64 pgs.; B&W; 6.5" x 4.8"; Hardcover

ISBN: 978-1-4521-1226-8

Age Rating: N/A

ICv2 Rating: 3 Stars out of 5

 

This new book by the artist of The Bunny Suicides is the female half of a pair of new cartoon books.  While the cartoons are funny overall, the ones in this volume seem to depend even more on stereotypes than the companion volume’s look at daddies.  Like the other book, some of the humor is going to go over the heads of children, but not for the same reasons.  Here, the laughs depend on replaying the stereotypes of feminine behavior about things like shoes, baked good and cat videos.  If you're too young to know the stereotypes, then you're probably too young to find the jokes funny.

 

Still, the individual cartoons contain a few grains of truth about life and families that will give this an audience.  Readers already familiar with Riley's earlier work will find it to be more approachable and more sentimental overall.  Older kids might give this book to their mothers on Mother's Day, if they are sure their moms have a good sense of humor.

 

Overall, the book is a very quick read, and worth its low price, but could have been slightly better.

 

--Nick Smith: Librarian Technician, Community Services, for the Pasadena Public Library in California.