The Perfect School Picture

June 24, 2013
Things could not be going more wrong for the narrator on school picture day, which starts with “the worst case of bedhead ever” and a maple syrup accident, then culminates in some serious paint spattering during art class. What a disaster on the very day one is being captured for posterity—or is it? What if the boy is actually running a long con, and his idea of perfection is in fact a photo that captures “my perfectly tangled hair, my perfectly rumpled shirt, my perfectly sticky face, my perfectly composed scowl”? Diesen (The Pout-Pout Fish) and Santat (The Three Ninja Pigs) are good-natured storytellers, and Santat’s expertise in exaggeration is just what the premise ordered (as the camera prepares to flash, the boy becomes a dead ringer for the Grinch). While the narrator’s personality never quite gels—either as sad sack or messy mastermind—Diesen and Santat unveil the narrator’s secret at just the right moment, before unloading another twist that should trigger photo-worthy grins. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Alyssa Eisner Henkin, Trident Media Group. Illustrator’s agent: Jodi Reamer, Writers House.

July 15, 2013
A clever tale about a kid who wants this year to be his showcase for the perfect school picture. The unnamed narrator might as well be called Wisenheimer. He tells readers that he really is excited about making this year's school photo the best ever, but they've got a right to wonder. He doesn't try to curb his hair--it's "the worst case of bedhead ever"--or find an alternative to his favorite shirt, which is found stained, wrinkled and smelly in the bottom of the hamper. He gets syrup all over his head at breakfast (it somehow magically disappears in what film critics would call a "continuity error"), then into a touch of spitball trouble with the bus driver, which puts a scowl on his face when he has to sit up front. Readers may start to catch on after he gets paint on himself in art class: Maybe Wisenheimer is just a standard slobby kid, and the perfect photo was never fated to be. Then the story turns on a dime, and then on another dime, and maybe more attention should have been paid to that bedhead, which does look somewhat like the devil's horns. Diesen has crafted a nice piece of work, and Santat's Photoshop illustrations have a polish that heightens the immediacy of the moment. This tale of a young Wisenheimer is plenty crafty and features a satisfyingly fitting requital. (Picture book. 4-8)

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October 1, 2013

Gr 1-3-Bold, exaggerated images done in Adobe Photoshop set the comedic stage for this story of picture-day preparation, which for the narrator began months in advance. All the preplanning culminates at the start of the book on picture-day morning with severe bed head, a favorite shirt rescued (stained and smelly) from the bottom of the hamper, and a sticky maple-syrup incident. Things continue on in this vein throughout the school day. Readers will wonder about the narrator's choices considering his professed devotion to taking the perfect picture. Carefully worded text gives away nothing, but as the photographer prepares his camera the real plan for the day comes clearly into focus. The child's idea of the perfect picture may look quite different from what his mother had in mind, and it is still not easy to orchestrate the outcome of a photograph. Colorful yearbook-style endpapers are fun to pore over and even include a place to insert one's own picture, though this feature will be compromised by most library processing. This slapstick picture book will appeal most to school-age kids who will get the jokes peppered throughout the text and the visuals.-Julie Roach, Cambridge Public Library, MA

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 22, 2019
In a picture book based on the school photos almost every child has endured, Diesen (the Pout-Pout Fish series) focuses on a boy who plots to ruin his school picture. He wakes up with bed head, which Santat (The Princess and the Pit Stop) captures with faux-Polaroid mug shots of the boy’s hair sticking up like a wave. He rummages for his favorite shirt—“You might call it ‘stained.’ You might call it ‘wrinkled.’ You might even call it ‘smelly.’ You wouldn’t be wrong”—and then has a close encounter with some maple syrup. School offers a paint-splattered art assignment; Santat imagines a project that combines birdhouses and macaroni. But when the
picture-taking moment arrives, things don’t go quite the way the narrator has planned. The narrator’s over-the-top voice makes reading aloud a must (“Wasted! Useless! Ruined...”) as Diesen portrays a boy who’s honing his mischief-making skills. Santat’s digital artwork chronicles the child’s emotional ride, from simmering rage to fiendish calculation to impatient exasperation. It’s high-energy comedy that involves only minor destruction. The small paperback includes a bound-in cardboard picture frame. Ages 5–7.

September 1, 2013
Grades K-2 This young boy has a plan for a perfect school picture. There are, however, a few bumps. Insane bed-head. A stained shirt. A large syrup disaster at breakfast. A paint splattering in art. It's a nightmarish swirl of problems leading to the moment of truthwhere it's revealed that the boy's plan isn't what we thought it was all along. Diesen has created a memorably grinchy hero, whose cynical observations and grumpy disposition make him the kind of harmless bad boy it's hard not to like. He scowls and mugs through double-page, full-page, and smaller illustrations, which the ever-reliable Santat renders with comic aplomb, preferring to pose his antihero straight toward the reader for maximum pop-eyed appeal. Side characters are similarly exaggerated for immediate identification: the jowly, pearled teacher; the heavy-browed bus driver. For such a bad attitude, this is a pretty darn good time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2014
Determined to capture his own brand of perfection in this year's school picture, a boy ruins his planned scowl when he fondly looks back on a day full of "hard work" (mischief- and mess-making). The silly concept and wry tone of Diesen's story will hit home with young troublemakers, and Santat's saturated caricatures and yearbook-style endpapers will elicit lots of laughs.

(Copyright 2014 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)