The World’s Longest Licorice Rope

Thanks to a mix of chores and luck, young Ben, portrayed with light skin and black hair, has a small bag of nickels to spend at the kid-run neighborhood treat fair. Passing up delights such as “sort of fresh Halloween candy,” he is drawn to a stand run by a puckish pink-skinned girl whose sign promises, for a single nickel, the “world’s longest licorice rope.” Sold! But as Ben takes one end and chews his way across the globe, he finds the entrepreneur always one step ahead, ready to sell him—at each point, for another nickel—a solution to any obstacle. As a lion eyes Ben slyly, the pith helmet–clad capitalist promptly rents Ben a carrot outfit because “lions are carnivorous.” (It’s fun to see how the girl is accessorized for each scene, though a fez worn during a five-cent pyramid tour strikes an odd note.) Myers’s (Children of the Forest) spare watercolor and ink illustrations, set along the single plane of the book’s horizontal format as in William Wondriska’s A Long Piece of String, offer just enough detail and splashes of color to draw readers along every vignette in this comical caveat emptor story with an ending that shows that you can’t put a price—even a nickel—on friendship. Ages 3–7. Agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (July)