The Sword in the Stove

A joyful, silly tale for the adventurer, boy or girl, young or old: medieval mayhem at its best. 

K-Gr 2--As Eenie and Meenie start cooking, they are shocked to find their missing friend Harold's sword and shield in their stove. Eenie comically cooks up ridiculous stories about why a shield could possibly be in their stove, while frantic Meenie continues to pull out additional items from their oven. The final punch line, which solves the mystery and ends the book, seems to come out of left field, which will leave some scratching their heads and others doubled over in laughter. The two cooks play off each other well, with grumpy Meenie trying to explain the situation to scatterbrained Eenie, making it an easy transition for a storytime. However, the joke is a bit one-note and hurried. Dormer's illustrations, often more conventional in other books, here take a simplistic, Oliver Jeffers-like approach. His choice to use a basic color palette against a mostly plain white background keeps the focus on the characters's dramatic facial expressions and size differences, which adds to the humor of the piece. VERDICT A hilarious addition to any picture book collection.--Peter Blenski, Greenfield Public Library, WI

Besides a couple of knights and a reference to The Sword in the Stone that adult readers will need to explain to the intended audience, this absurd dialogue bears no resemblance to Arthurian legend. Readers first see a knight running and chanting, "Gotta go, gotta go." Another knight follows, and questions a chef as to his friend Harold's whereabouts. "He had to go potty," explains the chef. While they wait, the chef and knight find a sword, shield, and helmet in the oven (the knight punctuates each odd discovery with silly exclamations like "Holy haddock!" and "Wobbling wizards!"), leading them to wonder, "Who would put Harold in the stove?" Enter a dragon, who roasts and eats the lot of them. Dormer (The Obstinate Pen) loosely assembles the characters from geometric watercolor shapes: a rectangular torso, an oval head, stick-figure arms and legs. There's a certain fun in the characters' wholesale inanity, but this lightweight tale amounts to a skit for only the most avid, and forgiving, fans of knightly adventure. Ages 4-8. Agent: Emily Mitchell, Wernick & Pratt Agency. (May)