It's Only Stanley, written and illustrated by Jon Agee. Oh, how I love surprises in funny picture books, and Agee's latest offers surprises galore, with one of the best twist endings (which I will not spoil) I have seen in a long time. Another great thing about the book is when you go through it a second time, knowing the ending, you encounter clever foreshadowing and new jokes--you have a whole new perspective of what is happening. The story revolves one extremely restless night for the Wimbledon family. Stanley, their beloved dog (who looks like a beagle), wakes them up by howling. Ah, "it's only Stanley," Walter the father says, "he's howling at the moon" and back into bed they go. However, a clanking sound sends a child scurrying into her parent's bedroom, and the father goes to the basement to discover Stanley fixing the oil tank with a hammer. (I love the wide-eyed cat appearing in every illustration.) And so it goes. Weird noise. Another distraught family member. The father checks on the noise only to find Stanley doing increasingly more bizarre things. What could he be doing? Agee's bouncy, rhyming text keeps the action hopping along, and his drawings delight, containing outrageously funny details that make you chuckle. The fact that Stanley looks so earnest, so driven, so serious only adds to the humor. Bravo!
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