How to clean your room in 10 easy steps book

Library ed. A veteran of the room-cleaning wars, our narrator here shares her own tips for tidying up. Amused audiences will recognize their own avoidant, less-than-successful cleaning behavior in the advice about responding to parental commands "You can pretend you're too busy to hear" , making the bed "If you find any dirty socks or undies, stick them under the bed" , and dusting "Just take a sock from under the bed and skooch it along the edge of your dresser". While there's some adult laughing at as well as laughing with in the humor here, many kids will greet the instructions with rueful recognition, on behalf of a sibling or friend even if not themselves. The details are well chosen for maximum effect without really taking the exaggeration into the stratosphere, and the casual, unblushing narrative tone conveys a confidence that helps keep this from being an obvious ironic lesson. Koren's line-and-watercolor illustrations evince his trademark densely scrawled, furry [End Page ] hatching; while the effect becomes a little busy in the more populated scenes, the hirsute texture is particularly effective given the theme. Readers-aloud will probably join with their audiences in recognizing a bit of themselves in the narrator's guidelines, and both groups will find more entertainment here than in tackling any messy room.