Willy Whyner, Cloud Designer

Third grader Willy Whyner turns his interest in clouds into a profitable business when he invents a way to create customized advertising clouds

Grade 1-3-Young Willy invents a cloud-making machine, and after a period of experimentation (he makes Moby Dick float above the pyramids, a giant croissant hover over Paris, and a tiny rain cloud soak his substitute teacher), he fills the sky with advertisements. Though the plot trails off at the end- the boy is forced to sell his business for 14 billion dollars, and shortly thereafter the clouds mysteriously disappear-the pencil illustrations are full of sly jokes. Willy's disapproving parents, Wilber and Wanda, look like they stepped right out of Grant Woods's American Gothic; the young inventor's bookshelf includes Aristophanes's Clouds and Shakespeare's The Tempest; and the Marx Brothers and Margaret Dumont appear over Mount Rushmore. A quirky use of color in typeface, paper, and highlights to the pencil artwork gives the book an overdesigned look, but readers will find it a natural companion to Pat Cummings's C.L.O.U.D.S. (Lothrop, 1986) and Judi Barrett's Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Atheneum, 1978).
John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.