BE GOOD, GORDON

Here’s some exuberantly subversive role-reversal: enjoined by his departing mother to “be good,” nerdy young Gordon obligingly retires—only to be bounced out when his new sitter, Lily Jigg-Popsicle, comes flying in to jump on the bed and by degrees lead him on to ever wilder and messier kinds of play. Archbold (Jessica Heatherthwaite: Witch Dispatcher, 2001, etc.) channels Quentin Blake with rapidly inked watercolors featuring a cheerful, bucktoothed teenager with immense pigtails, a carrot-topped bureaucrat-in-the-bud sporting heavy eyeglasses, and increasingly littered, mud-spattered domestic scenes. A frantic clean-up finishes just before the parents come in—“ ‘Was Gordon good?’ ‘Oh yes!’ said Lily Jigg-Popsicle. ‘First he was good . . . and then he was very good . . . at everything!’ ” Sitters and sittees alike will be captivated by this ever-so-much-more-exciting alternative to Marc Brown’s Arthur Babysits (1992) and other conventional beddy-bye chestnuts. (Picture book. 5-7)