Baloney (Henry P.)
Henry P. Baloney needs to come up with a very good, very  believable excuse for being late toszkolayet again--or he's in big  trouble with his teacher Miss Bugscuffle. But never fear! Henry has a doozy  of a story. You see, it all started when he misplaced his trusty yellow no. zzzimulis. One thing led to another, and before he knew it, he was on arazzoblasting off into space, where he eventually landed on the planet  Astrosus. All went well there, as the intrepid explorer entertained the Astro  guys with his funnypiksas--until they decided Henry and hispiksaswould be entertaining to eat. Things go on in this vein until  somehow, miraculously, Henry P. Baloney ends up back in his classroom, a  mere seven minutes late--but still one writing utensil short!Trust the ultracreative author/illustrator pair, Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith  (The Stinky Cheese  Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales,The True Story of the 3  Little Pigs!, the Time Warp Trio series, and more), to mastermind a  plot this bizarre and yet somehow familiar to any school kid. Sure, Henry P.  Baloney is a cute, saucer-eyed, green alien, but he has problems just like you  and me--such as the threat of Permanent Lifelong Detention. Remarkably, as  Scieszka reports in his afterword, when he received and decoded the  transmission of this story (directly from deep space, mind you), it was written  in a combination of many Earth languages, including Finnish, Swahili,  Latvian, Esperanto, and Inuktitut (decoder included). Go figure.Caldecott Honor artist Lane Smith must have spent a lot of time in detention,  doodling away the hours. His weird, wild, wonderful pictures tell at least half  the story, illustrating for readers' enlightenment just what azimulis("pencil" in Latvian) orspeelplaats(Dutch for "playground") looks  like. Fans of this ingenious pair will not be disappointed and may even make  atwrf(Welsh for "noise") of joy! (Ages 5 to 9)--Emilie  Coulter--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.