Your Birthday Was the Best!

K-Gr 2–Move over, Gregor Samsa; here’s another cockroach poised for immortality! Hutchings voices a clueless, four-inch crawler with hairy legs, long antennae, huge eyes, and a big smile, who, seeing a party starting, joins in unnoticed until he is discovered snoozing on the cake. He believes the kids’ screams show their joyful excitement to see him. Dad comes to the rescue with a much-feared vacuum that turns out to be a source of delicious food (not for the squeamish) within, and the relentlessly upbeat roach is subsequently reunited with lost family members in the garbage bin. He’s happy to see them but eagerly returns to the festivities (“I knew you’d miss me”) where—rinse and repeat. Sala’s perfect, just-realistic-enough, bug’s-eye illustrations underscore the deadpan gulf between the narrator’s and the humans’ perspectives.