Module 6: How to Clean Your Room in 10 easy steps

SLIS 5420/ Module 6/ February 18-24
How to Clean Your Room in 10 Easy Steps
By Jennifer LaRue Huget and Edward Koren

Bibliography:
Huget, J. L., & Koren, E. (2010). How to clean your room in 10 easy steps. New York, NY: Schwartz & Wade Books.

Summary:
The narrator of the book How to Clean Your Room in 10 Easy Steps provides readers with 10 easy to follow steps to have a cleaner room. While her advice may be solid in some instances most of the steps should be taken with a grain of salt and a fair share of humor.

Impressions:
I both like and dislike this book. I enjoyed the narrative storyline. The big sister in the book that is supposed to be "cleaning" her room reminds me of my own in some ways. "Pizza crusts many be munched on if they are less than a month old. If you can't remember how old they are, go over to your sister's room and give them to her". I think that most younger siblings will empathize with the younger sister in this book while all readers will enjoy the roundabout ways that "cleaning" gets done. The pictures are both the high and low points of this book. I love the way the illustrator puts funny little extra moments into the illustrations. For example, the fish whose hair and mannerisms mirror the main protagonists. At the same time, however, I was kind of turned off by the sheer amount of lines in the artwork. It kind of made the illustrations look like chicken scratch more than the clean cut lines and coloring that made up the other books I read this module. 

Review:
School Library Journal
K-Gr 2-A girl demonstrates how to get results and have fun at the same time. Dusting can be done with a sock, dust bunnies can be hidden away in a dresser drawer with the candy wrappers ("You know, for crafts"), and unwanted and broken toys can be wrapped up and given to a younger sibling. The things that you love should be shoved into the closet with the door secured tightly. "Watch out. It might explode." The tongue-in-cheek humor in Koren's pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations and Huget's writing will be appreciated by children who are responsible for cleaning their own rooms. They may not have a pet cat and dog helping them as Ann Erica Kelly does, but her story lightens the burden of this most dreaded chore.-Tanya Boudreau, Cold Lake Public Library, AB, Canada (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. 

Library Setting:
This book could be part of a storytime for younger readers that teaches counting and or the concept of irony. The protagonist of the books goes through easy to understand steps in a 1-10 interval that children can count with. Teaching irony with this book would be as easy as reading the story out loud and then having the kids point out the parts of the picture that don't fit.

Reference Review:
R.R. Bowker LLC. (2010). Books in print: How to clean a room in 10 easy steps. Retrieved from http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:4442/DetailedView.aspx?hreciid=|27216677|25984142&mc=USA
Image:
http://bellaonbooks.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/how-to-clean-your-room-in-10-easy-steps.jpg