A review by librariandest
Baby Monkey, Private Eye by Brian Selznick, David Serlin

5.0

Baby Monkey trying to put on his pants had my three-year-old busting a gut. She was cracking up so hard we had to stop so she could catch her breath. That's a five star book any day of the week.

This a hybrid between a traditional early reader (very few words per page, big font size, lots of repetition, illustrations are clues to the text) and a chapter book (around 200 pages, five chapters, has a more "I'm a big kid now" look to it). Even though it's a lot of pages, it's best read in one sitting because the joke builds to a crescendo and ends sweetly.

This book is near perfect. The only quibble I have is: why is the mom dressed in a 19th century bonnet and shawl? Baby monkey's pants are jeans and there's a SPACESHIP and an astronaut in one chapter so it's really puzzling to me that mom is dressed like Little Bo Peep. I know her face is meant to be hidden in the first picture of her, but there could have been other ways to accomplish that.