Me Want Pet!

In this Stone Age comedy, Sauer (Mr. Duck Means Business) and Shea (I’m a Shark) imagine a child with a demand as old as time. Cave Boy begs his parents for an animal companion, but Mama sends Cave Boy’s woolly mammoth away (“He too big. Where he sleep?”), Papa is allergic to saber-toothed tigers (“Make me sneeze! No can stay”), and Gran does not trust a baby dodo’s bathroom habits. Yet when a buffalo stampede threatens the family, Cave Boy’s friends prove they could be helpful around the encampment. Shea composes digital cartoons in saturated hues of iron-ore red, fiery yellow, and mossy green. His thick outlines mimic strokes of charcoal, and he pictures the iconic Cave Boy with a mop of black hair and a leopard-print off-the-shoulder onesie—he’s younger and more wild-looking than the similarly single-minded prehistoric hero of Jeremy Tankard’s Me Hungry (2008). If Sauer’s humor basically depends upon caveman–pidgin English jokes, Cave Boy’s quest (and Shea’s in-your-face artwork) will resonate with readers. Ages 3–7. Agent: Laura Rennert, Andrea Brown Literary Agency. Illustrator’s agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (Mar.)