Can't Catch Me

In the Hassetts' (Cat Up a Tree) version of The Gingerbread Man, the runaway provocateur is an impudent ice cube. ""Come back... you must cool my lemonade,"" says a boy to the cube as it leaps from the freezer. But the ice-blue cube has titanic plans: ""I'm off to the sea, where I will grow as big as an iceberg and bump into boats when they are not looking."" Aided by its jaunty red running shoes, the cube hops, skips and jumps to the bay, while its line of pursuers grows to include a dog, a popsicle man, a goose, a cat, a mouse and an ant. The coup de grace belongs to a wily whale, who ""knew a frosty snack when he saw one"" and swallows the cube in one gulp. A macabre undercurrent gives John Hassett's artwork an urbane appeal (with a hint of Charles Addams) and he obviously has great fondness for his gleeful, slightly sweaty anti-hero. But the chasers' motivations feel too mundane to give the story much momentum (the popsicle man, for example, wants to use the cube to keep his ice cream from melting) and the cube often gets lost in the busier, wide-frame spreads. (And why doesn't the cube melt?) Ages 5-8.