PreS-Gr 2 When Benny's mother asks him to put his plate in the sink, the boy wants to know "what would you do it I said no?" The imaginative chain of cause-and-effect gets wilder and wilder as Benny quizzes his mother about how she'd respond to a rapidly escalating sequence of misbehavior. Benny's hypothetical high jinks seem more mean-spirited than mischievous; he smashes plates, taunts baby penguins, ties lions' tails together, and yells bad words. Some readers may be taken aback by the mother's professed willingness to give her son to the zoo or sell him to the circus. Ably executed pastel-toned illustrations show a smug-faced mother and son in increasingly fantastical situations. VERDICT Some children may enjoy the outlandish naughtiness and far-fetched consequences. Many readers will find Benny's hypothetical misbehavior disagreeable, and his mother's responses unsettling. Rachel Anne Mencke, St. Matthew's Parish School, Pacific Palisades, CA

When Mom asks Benny to clear his plate, his reply--"What would you do if I said no?"--prompts a conversational tennis match ("I'd tell you that..."; "What would you do if...?"). Fergus gets the mom right: she engages Benny without indulging him. Leng keeps up with the fantasy ("I'd send you to the moon!") if not the characters' emotional responses.