Let's be honest: these two books will appeal first and foremost to comics and Tony DiTerlizzi fans. The retro use of aqua and tangerine conjure 1950s linoleum--in a good way. Making her debut, Angela DiTerlizzi upends vocabulary and syntax primers in the most gently entertaining ways, and husband Tony's (The Spider and the Fly; the Spiderwick Chronicles) artwork plants plenty of leading clues. The beginning text parrots a game of peek-a-boo: "It is sunshine time/ at the house of Meno./ But where is Meno?" A fairly ordinary house, perhaps hidden under snow, appears opposite. A turn of the page reveals the hero ("Meno!") who looks like your average boy . . . except for . . . is that an antenna on his hat? Next Meno searches for Yamagoo. Who is Yamagoo and where could he be? In the bed, the fridge, the toilet(!)? It turns out Yamagoo is a four-eyed levitating jellyfish sporting a red-and-yellow stripe baseball cap. This all sounds strange, but that's just what readers will revel in--it's an alien world whose rules they must figure out. Meno and Yamagoo drink "moo juice" (milk) and eat "dough with hole" (doughnuts). And, okay, the "big fun" of the title is a "toot" and "poot" from their back ends ("Tee-hee!")--child rebellion at its most benign. If they don't find the closing theme song (which reveals Meno as an "elf of space"), youngsters can discover in the next book that Meno's home was not snow-covered; he lives in a "house of cloud!" Yamagoo, meanwhile, misses his "friends of wet," so Meno helps his pet find a water-dwelling companion (leading to a very funny reference to Baywatch star Hasselhoff). These books (priced at not much more than greeting cards) make a wry gift for new parents with an offbeat sense of humor, comic fans who can appreciate the pacing and palette, and yes, toddlers who will enjoy the nonsensical words and logic.--Jennifer M. Brown
