Runaway Tomato

Agnew (the Harry and Horsie books) teams up with debut author Reeder for a story about what happens when the weather is a little too perfect for tomato cultivation. The resulting garden specimen is so big that it takes the whole town and a tow truck to budge it from a spot blocking the front door, after which it rolls through town causing the sort of mayhem not seen since Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. “Yuck, yuck, yuck!/ yells out the crowd,” as the tomato, hurtling through the air while being towed by a helicopter, explodes. “It’s like a bursting/ tomato cloud.” Agnew’s retro-styled, frenetically choreographed pictures have lots of details to pore over (nicely accented in tomato red), but offer little visual focus, while Reeder’s rhymes seldom go beyond describing the action on the page (“Rope is squeezing/ much too tight/ Tomato’s squishing/ What a sight!”). It’s all in good fun, though, and the town certainly seems to enjoy its solution to the mess, a goofy celebration called Tomatofest that’s shown via a gatefold. Ages 3–5. (June)