After declaring refusal to do so, an unseen narrator reads this book. The book's title appears as a Post-it note attached to the cover. With lighthearted, whimsical word-art drawings, hand-lettering, a clipped pace, and a palette dominated by a warm peach tone, the story features a wry and opinionated offstage narrator who provides metatextual commentary about the scorned book at hand. "Let me guess...Words," says the snarky narrator about what to expect when opening the book. Some words, such as the word doubtwith its useless letter B, are "plain ridiculous." And then there are unnecessarily large words, such as infinitesimal, which (confoundingly) means "small." By now, the narrator has reached peak crankiness. The next objects of the narrator's ire are sentences, described as "too many words all smushed together," followed by paragraphs ("Just looking at a paragraph exhausts me") and chapters. (Cue Chapter 2!) The hyperbolic vexation is genuinely funny as medium and message converge. Words, sentences, paragraphs, an entire chapter, and the ending are presented in this anti-reading diatribe, the enddepicted in triumphant, celebratory fireworks. Greenfield's gentle satire and Lowery's genuinely entertaining cartoon translation of prose to art might charm even avid readers (who may remember once agreeing with some of the narrator's sentiments). (This book was reviewed digitally.) A feisty manifesto and appealing visual experience for those who find books thrust upon them. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

This humorous picture book by Greenfield follows a familiar premise: the narrator, a reluctant reader, does not want to read the book in their hands. What follows is a meta text filled with curious asides and snarky ruminations on words, sentences, paragraphs, and more, both on an individual level and structurally: "Some words are just plain RIDICULOUS," one page reads in handwriting-like text. "Take the word DOUBT for example," the next page continues: "What is a 'B' doing in there???" A goldenrod box reads, pointing to the word in question. "If no one can HEAR the B why do we have to SEE it???" Lowery's art, done in pencil and digital media, evokes a child's notebook, with plentiful simple doodles, word art, underlines, boxes, and more against colorfully eye-catching pages and graph paper--evoking grids in this visually compelling narrative. Ages 4--8. (Nov.)