Hey, Who Made This Mess? by Primo Gallanosa

Hey, Who Made This Mess? by Primo Gallanosa. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 9780525517368, 2020

Format: Hardcover

Rating:  1-5 (5 is an excellent or a Starred review) 3

Genre: Picture book

What did you like about the book? This is a simple beginner mystery taking place in a zoo. The zookeeper follows footprints through Elephant’s bed, Lion’s milk bowl, and Ostrich’s sandbox, all the time imagining a more detailed monster who was likely to have made the mess. Young children will enjoy following the footprint path and continuing to guess who it was that made the mess. I appreciated seeing the zookeeper with brown skin and curly black hair, though the book is not specifically about race or diversity. The characters and clues in the illustrations pop out from the light background with their lines and color. A few illustrations in particular use a black background to add a more mysterious, and only very slightly scary element to the story. 

Anything you did not like about the book. Nothing stood out as particularly amazing. 

To whom would you recommend this book? Readers who like animals. 

Who should buy this book? Elementary school librarians, public librarians

Where would you shelve it? Picture books

Should we (librarians) put this on the top of our “to read” piles? No

Reviewer’s Name, Library (or school), City: Sarah Bickel, Greenlodge Elementary School, Dedham Massachusetts

Date of review: June 30, 2020