Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 06/01/2024 *Starred Review* Infectious rhythm, delightfully crowded artwork, and a buoyant story about dinnertime disaster make up Lucido’s riotous picture book debut. A family is getting ready for dinner when Nonna Ana (from Catania) arrives, bearing a cart of fresh eggs, and they set about making lasagna, stirring the eggs into the flour, and rolling the dough out “thin as paper.” Then, Nonno Titi (from Tahiti) rings the doorbell carrying a bag of zucchini, and the family starts making spaghettini. As more relatives ring the bell, the kitchen gets more and more packed with family members requiring different kinds of pasta—even the parrot, Pokey, has a discerning palette: “Pokey only eats our gnocchi.” Demirag’s deliciously textured, blocky digital artwork perfectly captures the jostling chaos with overlapping images of ingredients and kitchen tools, as well as aunts, uncles, cousins, several birds, and a cat, all of whom are getting hungrier. But when it’s finally time to eat, could there be too much pasta? Lucido’s bouncy rhyming lines are a pure joy to read aloud, and an abrupt comic turn at the end that marvelously maintains the rhyme scheme is sure to leave little ones hungry for repeat reads (and pasta). A playful pick, superb for group story time. - Copyright 2024 Booklist.