50 Below Zero

March 1, 1987
PreS-Gr 2 -Jason is awakened by the sounds of his father's sleepwalking and finds him asleep on top of the refrigerator. After returning him to bed, he is later awakened to find father asleep in the bathtub and later on top of the car in the garage. The fourth time it is footprints in the snow that lead him to a stiff father who must be thawed in the bathtub. He then ties one end of a piece of rope to his father's toe and another to his bed to limit the walks. It is his mother who is awakened in the final picture to find Jason asleep on top of the refrigerator and father asleep midstep with a toe tied to a piece of rope. What starts off as a humorous idea is run into the ground with repetition in the text so that even the humor of the final picture is lost in the stupidity of the story. The humorous illustrations are large and colorful with a page of text facing each one, but the story rates a zero. Nancy A. Gifford, Schenectady County Public Library, N.Y.