A Pizza with Everything on It

What do pizzas and cosmology have in common? A lot, according to this appealing treatise by Scheele (We Put a Man on the Moon, for adults) and Pizza (Dream Machine). Dad, the pale-skinned owner-chef of Papa Za’s, has agreed to make his peach-skinned kid, who narrates, “a pizza with everything on it.” But the child isn’t satisfied with the usual ingredients, and as Dad becomes an avid co-conspirator, gouache, pencil, and digital collage art plays along, mixing the stylings of kids’ artwork with the giddy, gravity-defying excess of vintage underground comics. Soon the pizza toppings include not only ice cream cones and an entire turkey, but school supplies, the White House, a particle accelerator, a wheelbarrow full of penguins, and more. A calamitous, voracious pizza black hole results—“as black as burnt pizza crust,” the protagonist notes, as two sets of eyes peer out of the vortex—but a “pizza big bang” (“BOOM!”) reboots the universe and returns the duo back home, sort of. It’s catnip for pizza’s many fans, and something more: a joyful tribute to a parent and child who are two peas in a pod within a wide universe of families and pizzas. Ages 5–8. [em]Author’s agent: Erica Rand Silverman, Stimola Literary Studio. Illustrator’s agent: Katherine Latshaw and John Cusick, Folio Literary. (Apr.) [/em]