Mort Drucker (1929–2020)

Yet another installment of Snowpocalypse 2011 Toddler Reading Reviews.

I didn't like this one. I checked it out, because it looked potentially awesome, but the tiredness of the characterizations just annoyed me. White male scientist saves the day, check. White male politicians, realistically but unimaginatively depicted, check. Scientist's attractive young female helpmate (this time, a niece), check. Preponderance of images of male faces, check. So a lot of what I would consider sexist illustration in a children's picture book. Hard to say how much of that is the author, Yorinks, and how much is the illustrator, Mort Drucker, of Mad Magazine fame. Drucker's illustrations were really Mad Magazine-ish, and the females were all drawn in his weirdly sexualized not-quite-comic-book style; so they have huge breasts and tiny waists and sexy hips, but often strange grimaces on their faces. It didn't quite look right, to me, in a children's book.

On a positive note, the characters were ethnically diverse. A picture of scientists hard at work, for instance, had two people of color out of five faces -- sadly, though, only one scientist seen out of the seven total was female.

This one will be heading back to the library as soon as the snowstorm ends.… (plus d'informations)