Marty Pants: Do Not Open!

Parisi, creator of the long-running comic strip “Off the Mark,” makes his fiction debut with a heavily illustrated series opener about a bumbling young artist whose overactive imagination, penchant for leaping to conclusions, and self-delusion drive the book’s comedy. After Marty finds a tattered note that reads “An alien is observing you,” he suspects that it refers to his short-tempered teacher, Mr. McPhee. Sneaking onto the teacher’s computer, Marty spots the word “annihilate” (on a vocabulary list, it turns out) and vows to expose the extraterrestrial and save the Earth. Parisi’s b&w cartoons are meant to be Marty’s work, and both text and art deliver zingers, pratfalls, and running gags that will keep kids laughing: whenever Marty is supposed to be riding his bicycle, he’s shown on a pogo stick (“I’m no good at drawing bikes”), and because his sister “changes the spelling [of her name] almost as often as she changes her mood,” Marty never bothers spelling it the same way (Erika, Ericcah, Erikcka, etc.). Though readers may find the ending unsurprising, they’ll be eager to see more of Marty’s high jinks. Ages 8–12. [em]Agent: Lynn Reznick, Atlantic Features Syndicate. (May) [/em]