l to r: Jane Blondie and Marcus Cutler

Charlie, the narrator of Jane Blondie’s frame-breaking picture book, doesn’t want his readers to turn the book’s pages for self-interested reasons. He knows that every page turned gets him closer to that part of the day he dreads most: bath time. And so he delays by leading readers from one room of his house to another – mud room, kitchen, craft room – anything to put off the inevitable.

There’s a well-established tradition in picture books of characters addressing readers to get something they want, which the reader then – in an act of minor rebellion – denies, Mo Willems’s Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! being an obvious example.

Do Not Turn the Page! falls squarely into this category, along with such almost identically titled books as Adam Lehrhaupt’s Warning: Do Not Open This Book and Michaela Muntean and Pascal Lemaitre’s Do Not Open This Book!

The best of the category, however, is still Jon Stone’s classic Sesame Street title from the ’70s, The Monster at the End of This Book, in which furry old Grover implores readers not to turn pages so that he and the reader can together avoid confronting the titular monster. He does so using a host of hilarious techniques; he even builds a brick wall that the reader then “knocks down” by turning the page.

The monster turns out to be Grover himself, of course. And the beauty of it all is that young readers, knowing this all along, get the fun of defying orders, knowing things will all be okay.

Though helped substantially by Marcus Cutler’s riotous illustrations, Blondie’s story feels, in comparison, a bit inconsequential. Absent is the humour, urgency, and “we” sense of other books of this type. Why, after all, should readers care if Charlie does or doesn’t have a bath – something most of them probably enjoy? As such, turning the book’s pages feels a bit like playing the sensible, slightly scolding parent. And who wants to do that before they absolutely have to?