Glasses, Who Needs 'em (Viking Kestrel Picture Books) - Hardcover

Kindergarten-Grade 3-- When a young patient states, "I'm worried about looking like a dork," the optometrist lists others who wear spectacles--"monster-movie" stuntpeople, famous inventors, entire planets. Just when he decides the doctor is crazy, the boy looks through the glasses and sees what he's been missing (almost everyone and everything in the world wearing glasses). Smith's illustrations are as offbeat as his work in Scieszka's The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (Viking, 1989). His text is just as wacky, and reflects a young boy's resistance not only to the idea of wearing glasses, but also to the optometrist's efforts to fit him. The page layout features different colors and typefaces at every turn. Unfortunately, it's sometimes difficult to read the print on a dark page. A fun romp that's more irreverent than Brown's Arthur's Eyes (Joy St/Little, 1979) or Keller's Cromwell's Glasses (Greenwillow, 1982), and one that just might give the people at the counter at LensCrafters some ammunition for the next youngster who doesn't want to look like a dork. --Christine A. Moesch, Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, Buffalo, NY
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this visually sophisticated look at a boy who assertively debates with a doctor who points out that he needs glasses, the mildly witty text is secondary to a wonderful series of out-of- focus illustrations of various visages equipped with specs: not just Mom, Sis, inventors, and `' `monster-movie' stuntpeople,'' but pink elephants, planets, and potatoes. The real clincher is not the list but the glasses themselves: on the last spread, everything finally comes clear. The idea may be limited, but the accompanying illustrations are comical and composed with remarkable skill. Offbeat but fascinating. (Picture book. 3+) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.