Mr. Pants: It’s Go Time!

Newcomers McCormick and Lazzell blend a chapter-book format with a comic-book sensibility in an oddball story about three cat siblings and their human mother. Mr. Pants, an orange cat with boundless energy, has neglected to clean his room, and now his end-of-summer trip to play laser tag is in jeopardy. Over seven semi-episodic chapters, Mr. Pants clashes with his responsible sister, Foot Foot, over a new toy, back-to-school shopping, and trips to build dolls at the Fairy Princess Dream Factory and, yes, play laser tag. Meanwhile, four-year-old Grommy, a white puffball, just tries to keep up with her siblings. Lazzell’s digital cartoons—simple, flat shapes outlined in black—provide many visual gags for a story that unfolds almost entirely through speech-balloon dialogue (“Why couldn’t she be beautiful and deadly?” Mr. Boots asks the shopkeeper at the doll store after learning that nunchucks and bazookas aren’t available as accessories). The jokes can be hit or miss, but readers with highly demanding siblings will find plenty to recognize in this family’s harried day of activities and errands, while enjoying Mr. Boots’s lighthearted comeuppances. Ages 6–8. (July)