In this perceptive account of family traits, Maloney and Zekauskas (previously paired for Belly Button Boy) consider individual and generational points of view. Their young hero, Percival, feels he is "not his own man. Every
one who saw Percival saw something of themselves in him." But the boy wants to be more than the sum of "his mother's nose, his father's eyes, his sister's mouth,... his aunt's ear for music." He runs away to his grandparents' house, where he receives an urgent message: "Your mother just said you were missing. And so is her nose!" Maloney and Zekauskas fantasize that, without Percival, the family loses actual anatomical parts. Then they picture Percival leafing through black-and-white photos and recognizing himself in much older relatives. They show that Percival is part of a continuum; by returning home, he literally and figuratively restores the missing pieces ("You've saved the whole family!" his mother declares, in a poignant double-entendre). Maloney and Zekauskas's rather awkward gouaches play up the humor rather than the poignancy of this sympathetic narrative of belonging, which argues that there is "a little bit of everyone in everybody." Ages 4-8. (Sept.)
