Children's Book Review: *How to Clean Your Room* by Jennifer LaRue Huget

• How to Clean Your Room (in 10 easy steps) by Jennifer LaRue Huget; illustrated by Edward Koren
• Reading level: Ages 4-8
• Hardcover: 40 pages
• Publisher: Schwartz & Wade (May 11, 2010)
• ISBN-13: 978-0375844102

Back-of-the-book blurb: Got a messy room? No problem!  This simple, laugh-out-loud picture-book guide to cleaning your room is sure to make picking up a snap. Here is the first rule: Always wait until your mother hollers, “GET UP THERE AND CLEAN YOUR ROOM—NOW!” using all three of your names. Once she does, you’d better get moving. From dumping out drawers and dividing stuff into piles to arranging all eight zillion of your stuffed animals, here’s the kind of advice on room tidying that everyone can relate to.

She Is Too Fond of Books’ review: How to Clean Your Room in 10 easy steps is, as the book flap promises, laugh-out-loud reading for the entire family.  J and I laughed at the universal and timeless warning of parents using “all three of your names” (didn’t you always know Mom and Dad meant business when you heard that?!), as well as all the tricks we used to try (and our kids attempt now), such as pretending we didn’t hear Mom’s request, or telling her “But my room isn’t messy.  I know exactly where everything is!”  Hmmm, come to think of it, I’m still using that line if J comments on the paper pile-up on my kitchen desk!

Does this sound familiar, like something you’ve witnessed in your own children (or done yourself?!):

#2 Pull everything out of your drawers and closet and shelves.  Every Single Thing.

All your marbles and your dolls and their eensy-beensy little shoes and your bracelets and barrettes and birthday cards … Dump it all in the middle of the room.  Then plunk yourself down, pick a doll out of the pile, and braid her hair until someone comes up to scream at you again.

Yes, I laughed when I read:

Dusting is easy.  Just take a sock from under the bed and skooch it along the edge of your dresser.  This is the only place that your mother ever checks.

Does that make me a bad parent?  No, I don’t think so!  I’m laughing with my kids (OK, maybe a little bit at them, too, but it’s all in fun).

No, this isn’t an instruction manual for ‘how to clean your room’, it’s a funny look at the common tricks kids attempt when asked to clean their rooms.  How to Clean Your Room is a book appreciated by both the adult and child in me; and now my kids know we’re onto them and their room-cleaning short cuts!

Readers of The New Yorker magazine may recognize the styling of Edward Koren’s cartoons in the illustrations.  I especially like the expressions on the faces of the dust bunnies, and wonder if they’ll ever make it into his brand of political commentary.