Brief Thief

Leon the lizard eats his breakfast and suns himself for a spell; then, "Leon has to go poo." But: "OH NO! NO PAPER!" Fortunately, Leon finds a pair of old, holey underpants hanging nearby on a tree. He has a moment of doubt ("They might belong to someone…") but decides to go for it. Here's where the proverbial poo hits the fan. After Leon finishes, er, freshening up, he's accosted by a voice claiming to be his conscience ("I'm the little voice you hear inside your head whenever you get up to something naughty"). The disembodied voice berates Leon for his poor judgment and demands that he clean the soiled undies ("Go on, scrub! Like you mean it!"). The book's large pages give Leon's morality play lots of space to unfold. Di Giacomo's expressive illustrations feature a sympathetic and animated spindly limbed, solid-torsoed main character. While author Escoffier's potty humor is uninhibited (oh, those French!), the illustrator's restraint is admirable, leaving less savory images up to the imagination. Instead, she plays up the joke: after a freaked-out Leon slinks away, the owner of the underpants is revealed to be a caped rabbit dressed all in red, a superhero who needs the holey underwear for an entirely different purpose. So, children, if you're going to wear upcycled undies on your head, make sure you know where they've been. And for superheroes' sakes, don't ever leave the house without some wipes. kitty flynn