The selfish sister

The titular sister of this second subversive picture book from Sedaris (Pretty Ugly) is wildly covetous--she's even portrayed with skin that's an envious green. "She took my bed, my towel, my chair,// my stuffed giraffe, my threadbare hare," the sibling narrator laments, but the sister's behaviors extend far beyond nabbing individual effects. Rigid rhyming lines describe a character who claims also grandfather Sidney, "our brother's kidney," and "the flag that means LGBT!" When the protagonist finally gets what seems like her best life, end pages lower the boom, offering not a whiff of redemption: "There's nothing sister doesn't own.// Except for friends. She's all alone." Staake (Lost) brings anarchic Ren & Stimpy--like energy to the proceedings via digitally colored pencil and ink drawings that give the book a raw, dark-carnival giddiness. Though the unrelenting catalog of seized goods eventually wears thin, the illustrations supply a pressure-relief valve, giving readers permission to acknowledge what they know in their bones: siblings can be absolutely awful. Characters are depicted with various skin tones, many fanciful. Ages 7--10. Author's agent: Cristina Concepcion, Don Congdon Assoc. Illustrator's agent: Gillian MacKenzie. Gillian MacKenzie Agency. (Mar.)

Wit snaps and crackles in humorist Sedaris' tale of narcissism run amok. "The selfish sister, pronoun 'she,' // only thinks of / me me me!" A green-skinned, one-toothed little tyrant, complete with her own tiny crown, terrorizes one and all with her insufferable greed and many demands. Yet Sedaris' deft rhymes make listening to her mandates an utter treat. She declares that she deserves to own an endless list of items, including but not limited to "the lesser Black Tailed Gull, / the human race, / this monkey skull, / beebop hits, / a jazz CD, / the flag that means LGBT." A lesser artist might quail at the sheer variety of objects, concepts, and even seasons that this little despot lays claim to, but Staake is more than up to the challenge. Inventive stylings in pen and ink give this retro-looking tale some visual panache and a particularly contemporary bit of brazen appeal. Unlike with Sedaris' previous foray into picture books (2024'sPretty Ugly, illustrated by the late Ian Falconer), here he opts to include a smidgen of a lesson at the end of the tale, off-handedly mentioning that the sister has everything she could want, except for friends. Thankfully, this mic drop of a conclusion avoids any danger of didacticism. Blessedly bad behavior gets its day in the sun, and we are HERE for it!(Picture book. 4-8) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.