A cute critter meets a Twilight Zone-esque fate in the horrifyingly funny Troubling Tonsils!, first in an early chapter book spinoff series from Aaron Reynolds and Peter Brown's Caldecott Honor-winning picture book Creepy Carrots! and its sequels.
Jasper Rabbit appears in a slouchy suit to emcee the proceedings, warning that the story may have its audience "peeing your pants without knowing whether it's from fright or hilarity or maybe just confusion." He asks the reader to consider tonsils, "tiny, fleshy wads" existing in dark anonymity within the body. Charlie, a happy-go-lucky young marmot in a striped polo shirt, is introduced. Charlie needs a tonsillectomy and wants to keep the extracted tonsils for show-and-tell. His father and doctor see the macabre appeal and agree. Then his doctor tells him at his operation appointment that his tonsils have mysteriously vanished. Charlie's infection seems oddly, miraculously solved until he hears a "slithery, gooey, unsettling sound" in the night and wakes up to find the show-and-tell tables have alarmingly turned.
Reynolds skillfully paces the proceedings in brief, quick-moving chapters studded with moments of ominous foreshadowing. The plot is pitched to both amuse and horrify, helped along by Brown's digital and pencil illustrations rendered in grayscale with fleshy, tonsil-pink accents. The organs are so squishy and real, Brown deserves an award for grotesquerie. This gleefully ghoulish story will go down best with independent readers ready for truly twisted plots with a constant undercurrent of silliness even at its most (bio)hazardous moments. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager, Allen County Public Library