Chester Review

Kids Can Press

Last year's Cybils winner's out to prove she has her finger firmly on the elevated pulse of neurotic children everywhere. She mines deep into their psyches for a rich vein of dysfunctions -- and it's all pure gold.

This time out, the four-legged stand-in for us wacky humans is named Chester, a portly calico (though somebody please tell her that all calicos are female) with no self-esteem issues whatsoever. His narcissism is of rock-star proportions, and he can't bear the idea of a book being written about some nameless mouse. He X-es out any mention of that other animal and inserts himself into the text and art with a red marker. He even rewrites the book's dedication -- to himself.

We get to meet Watt, who breaks the fourth wall as she vainly tries to keep the cat at bay, but she never gets past "Once upon a time ..." Her black type and his red scribbles battle it out as Chester edits the book to his liking and wreaks havoc with the narrative.

Like Watt, you should give up on a chronoligical story here. Just sit back and watch the fur fly.

Watt's design skills are also put to good use, with Chester breaking the neatly framed, otherwise bland watercolors to mark his territory, so to speak.

Kids will of course love Chester's rambunctious, in-your-face misbehavior, which results in his getting a well-deserved comeuppance in the form of a pink tutu. The humor might be lost on littler kids or if you're raising your kids to think across gender stereotypes, but having to explain it shouldn't ruin its magic.

I can only conclude that Watt must be using the DSM as fodder for her characters. First obsessive compulsive disorder, now narcissism. If so, I'm a little nervous about what she'll do when she gets around to multiple personality disorder.