The Bad Idea and Other Stories [Earl & Worm]
by Greg Pizzoli; illus. by the author
Primary    Knopf    72 pp.
4/25    9780593649664    $10.99
Library ed.  9780593649671    $13.99
e-book ed.  9780593649688    $6.99

In the first of three episodic chapters in this series debut, Worm is irritated by her new neighbor, Earl, a bird. “Why is he up so early? And why is he smiling like that?” Throughout the interactions that follow, language and design are pitched to children almost ready to leap into longer chapter books: multiple short sentences per page, everyday words, ample repetition, and a readable typeface. The art is a friendly and sophisticated blend of Roy Lichtenstein and Richard Scarry with pastel shades of blue, green, orange, and yellow. Pizzoli generates humor with straightforward sentences that make bold statements (“It was not sweet. It was bitter. So was Worm”) and emphasize Earl’s obliviousness (“I love to talk. I can talk for both of us. You can just listen”). Words appear in different contexts to keep repetition from feeling overly tedious. The words sugar, sweet, and lemon all appear in the first and third stories, for instance, but in the first story they’re around Earl making lemonade, and in the third story, around Worm trying to write a poem. Like Willems’s Elephant and Piggie and Lobel’s Frog and Toad series, this provides solid reading practice in a package that kids and families will read for the love of story.

From the ">May/June 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.