cover image Uncle Carmello

Uncle Carmello

David Zucker. MacMillan Publishing Company, $14.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-02-793760-2

Zucker's first children's book revolves around a familiar figure--the dreaded elderly relative who is ``old and angry and had been that way forever.'' Uncle Carmello's fierceness consists of speaking in gruff, heavily accented English (``Don't-a touch!'' he cries whenever David gets interested in one of the innumerable objects in one of his innumerable collections). When Uncle Carmello takes David marketing in an Italian neighborhood in nearby Boston, however, their shared pleasure in the sights, sounds and special foods overcomes generation gaps and language barriers. But the narration is disingenuous (traveling by Greyhound bus, 10-year-old David is impressed that it has a restroom, ``although when David went to take a rest he was surprised to find a toilet instead of a bed'') and, as such, fails to vivify either the characters or their conflicts. Miller's watercolors, although packed with details and drenched in warm colors, seem equally arrested. Ages 5-9. (Mar.)