School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1-Animal-obsessed baby Frank longs for a pet, but his parents feel that owning one is prohibitively costly. While Frank is at a bank with his mom, the solution becomes clear-to fund his dream of keeping a "furry friend," Frank just needs to rob the place! Conveniently clad in a black-and-white striped onesie, the little criminal dons a bandit mask and sneaks past the bank's impressive security defenses. Cramming his suit full of bills, he rides the bus with his mom, and all of the passersby except a dog are oblivious to the comically oversize infant. Once home, he buys a host of animals off the Internet and conceals them in increasingly unlikely spots. "There were leopards in his cupboards and a beaver in the bath. And Frank was really struggling to hide his new giraffe." The jig is up, however, once Frank's mom finds "a rhino in the shed" and discovers Frank's secret stash. To recompense the bank in full, the family opens a zoo in their home, with baby Frank happy at last, "behind bars." Whalley's jaunty verse is a delight to read aloud, and the deadpan tone is deftly fleshed out by Collins's playful gouache-and-ink cartoon illustrations. The lovable googly-eyed protagonist and a plethora of silly details will tickle sharp-eyed -readers. -VERDICT A hilarious British import, light on the moral but heavy on the fun, that merits many repeat readings.-Yelena -Voysey, formerly at Pickering Educational Library, Boston University © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Baby Frank, who still sleeps in a crib and wears black-and-white-striped onesies, desperately wants a pet. "It didn't matter what it was-/ a dog, a cat, or rabbit-/ if Frank saw fur while out on walks,/ he'd lunge and try to grab it," Whalley writes. But a pet and its accoutrements require something babies don't have: cash. The titular heist goes off without a hitch (Frank slips through the bars and past the laser beam alarms), and thanks to the internet, he soon accumulates a secret menagerie-until Mom discovers the rhino in the shed. What's a family to do with a zoo's worth of animals, and how can they ensure that baby's first heist is his last? The story's wrap-up hedges its bets ethically-yes, the punishment fits the crime, but Frank's realization that "stealing things was very wrong" feels more mandated than convincing. Nevertheless, Collins, a cartoonist and graphic novelist making his children's book debut, creates a colorful, slyly skewed world for his obsessed protagonist to inhabit, and Frank's youthful resourcefulness and deeply appealing, googly eyed "who, me?" look are enough to suggest that he isn't truly a bad seed. Ages 3-6. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
