Mr. King's Machine by Genevieve Cote- ADVISABLE

Cote, Genevieve. Mr. King’s Machine, PICTURE BOOK. Kids Can Press, 2016. $16.95. Mr. King builds a caterpillar catching machine to keep them from eating all the flowers (which he LOVES). His machine is loud and puts out a lot of exhaust. After he goes around trying to catch the caterpillars he has made a cloudy, stinky mess of things. His friends show him how he has polluted the air and tell him about how caterpillars turn into butterflies, which help flowers grow. Mr. King changes his machine into a flower fan, which blows flower seeds into the air and spreads them around to grow. I like the idea of an environmentally friendly premise for a children’s book. I don’t think there are enough of them. But I just don’t connect with the Mr. King character, which makes it hard to care about anything he is doing. The illustrations aren’t outstanding either, but I do like this book better than the other Mr. King story I reviewed. PRE-K, K-3- ADVISABLE. Reviewed by Shay, High School Librarian