PETERRIFIC

Bestseller Kann expands her storytelling to include Pinkalicious’ younger brother, Peter.

Peter is playing with blocks in the living room while his sister reads. Deciding he wants “to build a GIANT tower all by [him]self” for once, he enlists Pinkalicious’ help in gathering materials from neighbors. Sending up a basket of crackers along with Peter’s telescope, Pinkalicious watches as he piles the blocks higher and higher beneath him. Mommy and Daddy are cross, but Peter keeps on building. At last he sits atop a stratosphere-breaching tower, his family far below and the curve of the Earth clear in the lower horizon. (Caregivers of a psychoanalytic bent will take note of the extremely phallic nature of Peter’s enterprise.) But it’s lonely at the top, and when Peter realizes he doesn’t know how to get down, he eats his crackers and sits down for a cry. Wind comes in the morning along with the convenient recollection that he is “an expert knot tier,” so he fashions a parachute and floats back home, where his parents welcome him and tell him he should build a safe tower next time. (So much for manly adventure.) Kann’s digital collages mirror the text but do not extend it, eschewing the opportunity to play with the boundary between the real and imagined worlds. Peter and Pinkalicious’ white family have all the expressiveness of Playmobil figurines.

Petepid.