THE DAILY COMET

“Go to Work with a Parent” Day proves an eye-opening experience for a journalist’s fact-loving son in this distinctively illustrated venture from the creators of Mrs. Marlowe’s Mice (2007). Hayward’s contemptuous conviction that his Dad works for a total rag takes increasingly hard hits after his parent is pulled off a Flying Spaghetti Monster assignment to cover a hatching dinosaur egg at the museum, then a report of a ten-foot-tall chicken dashing across Times Square and finally a giant cup-and-saucer that lands in Central Park to disgorge a huge robot octopus. Thanks to a found bottle of super solvent that dissolves the monster into a puddle of "nutritious green liquid," Hayward saves New York and earns a screaming headline (see title). Sepia-toned with highlights in pale green and yellow, Asch fils’s full-spread multilayered collages of heavily reworked photos and photorealistic elements hark back to the better-budgeted monster flicks of yestercentury and feature a cab-driving werewolf and a photographer who looks like Elvis, among other cameos. A pleaser for fans of Adam Rex’s Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich (2006) and like cineastic fare. (Picture book. 7-10)