Happy Harry's Café

PreS-Gr 2–Harry (a bear or possibly a dog) makes great soup. Most of  his animal friends love it, but Matt the cat says “The soup’s no good.” Why? Because he has no spoon–ba-dum-dum! After a good laugh, Matt gets a spoon, praises the soup, and he and Harry sing a soup song. This is a retelling of a famous Jewish joke (as noted in the flap copy), but Rosen is no Myron Cohen. The additional theme of encouraging people to stop to smell the roses, as evinced by Harry telling each rushing customer to “Take it easy,” gets lost along the way. The punch line is so overexplained that it is no longer funny. It is further belabored in song, where lightly printed sheet music fails to guide readers in their singing. While the original joke is quite funny, the humor may be lost on young readers. Cheerful, bright, blocky mixed-media illustrations go well with the jocular intent of the story, but are not enough to save it.–Heidi Estrin, Congregation B’nai Israel, Boca Raton, FL