Mucumber McGee and the Half-Eaten Hot Dog

In an overlong rhyming text that nods to Lemony Snicket's assume-the-worst philosophy, this picture book debut indulges a boy's morbid fantasies about tainted food. The setting, a damp and dreary Edwardian mansion, signals the tale's macabre potential, as does the unwholesome appearance of Mucumber McGee, a pale, skinny boy in an oversize black suit with purple lapels. Mucumber is in need of a snack, and finds satisfaction in a few bites from a cold hot dog in an otherwise empty icebox. At this, his sister informs him that raw hot dogs are ""deadly bad to eat!"" Mucumber's imagination runs wild, and he ponders his impending demise. ""I ate a cold wiener without cooking it first./ And now the bacteria will cause me to burst!"" he wails to his mother. She replies, ""Sweet Mucumber, don't worry. If you'd only looked,/ the package says clearly: Hot dogs are precooked!"" Yet the hot dog in question was not in a package; it wasn't even on a plate when he found it. The conclusion-that children should take food advice from mothers, not ""others, like sisters or brothers"" (and what happened to fathers?)-fails to consider Mucumber's weird, unstocked kitchen. Loehr establishes spooky humor in his background art, but kids may be too busy pointing out the contradictions between the text and the pictures to appreciate it. Ages 3-8.