Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 08/01/2018 *Starred Review* In a manic tale that’s going to be very hard to read without inducing “peels” of laughter, a potato almost misses out on a sale at Lance Vance’s Fancy Pants Store. When he spots an eggplant who had once given him a rude shove trying on a pair at Lance Vance's, Potato refuses to rush into the store with his fellow spuds. By the time he determines that no other store carries potato pants, the racks are empty. Worse yet, in bursting through the door, he startles Eggplant into ripping his new pants. Uh oh, is it time for mashed potatoes? To panicky Potato’s amazement, though, Eggplant only wants to apologize! Better yet, it just happens that there’s one pair of potato pants left, on the mannequin in the window, and that just happens to be the very stripy pair—“with stripey suspenders for added stripey-ness!”—that Potato has craved since the beginning. Along with filling her pages with tubers of diverse sorts, fitted with cartoon faces and bulging eyes, Keller offers a sprawling line of potato-shaped pants styled (by guest designer Tubérto) in a great variety of loud stripes, checks, and plaids. She also constructs an alliteration-rich narrative using plenty of exclamation points and big type in multiple colors to crank the volume up even further. It’s potato pandemonium, any way you slice it. - Copyright 2018 Booklist.