cover image DREDDIELOCKS AND THE THREE SLUGS

DREDDIELOCKS AND THE THREE SLUGS

Margaret Hyde, , illus. by Curtis Parker. . Pelican, $16.95 (36pp) ISBN 978-1-58980-231-5

Banana slugs seem a can't-miss proposition for a picture book, but even slug slime "stickier than any glue in the world" can't bond this lackluster Goldilocks tale together. Ooey, Gooey and Looey, a slug trio, "set out on a morning stroll through the wet grass leaving their breakfast, mushroom gruel, to moisten in the dew." Along comes a red ant named DreddieLocks, who gets his name from the spaghetti-like protrusions sticking out the sides of his backward baseball cap. Dreddie samples each of the slugs' gruel, finding one too cold, one too hot and another "perfectly perfect." But there's a twist. Every time Dreddie touches a bowl, sits on a toadstool or lies down on a leaf-bed, the item sticks to him. When the slug family finds him, he's piled high with their belongings and can't fit out the door—but "they all lived slimily ever after." Parker, who makes his children's debut here, presents close-ups of the pop-eyed ant and the rippling, elephantine slugs. In his full-bleed paintings of the bugs' viney abode, he favors thick hues of rust red, muddy ochre, olive, evergreen and leaden black. Hyde, creator of the Great Art for Kids board books, follows the Three Bears formula with the addition of the slugs' secretions. Her retelling puts a new spin on a classic, but the dense, heavy artwork makes an already repetitive story proceed at a snail's pace. Endnotes about banana slugs and ants add substance. Ages 5-8. (Mar.)