Cleaning Up Isn't a Snap for Little Critter

When I was a little kid watching Mary Poppins for the first time, and then the tenth, I found myself very jealous of Jane and Michael, getting their messy room magically cleaned up by the world's most marvelous nanny. I especially envied Jane, who helped the whole thing happen by snapping her fingers. I was like Michael, standing by feebly, rubbing his fingers together, while his sister had all the fun. Though I knew that bit of magic worked only in movies and books, I think a part of me always suspected that if only I were to somehow acquire the ability to snap my fingers, my room would become magically clean too. I still keep a rather untidy room, and I still can't snap my fingers. Coincidence?

Little Critter sure could use some finger-snapping action in Just a Mess, in which a search for a missing baseball glove leads him in a most unexpected direction: to his room. "I never thought to look in there," he tells us. "What a mess!" That is not an exaggeration. Even I have to say I don't think my room was ever quite as bad as his, with random objects spilling off the bed, peeking out of the closet, tumbling out of the dresser. For such a young fellow, he sure has a lot of stuff. This is a good thing in general, but not when one is trying to make sense out of one's room.

Poor Little Critter is further frustrated when his mom declines to help him clean up the mess and so do his siblings. How can he ever get the job done himself? Well, he's not quite alone; he enjoys the company of a spider and a grasshopper who also appeared in Just For You, the first of the Little Critter books. But other than that, he's on his own with a job few hot-blooded children would be likely to want. Away with the footballs, tennis rackets and trains! Away with the books and the boxes of shmoo! Away with it all! But is this really getting his room clean? And more importantly, will he ever again see his baseball glove?

As a rather hopeless mess maker, I have been in Little Critter's shoes... er, lack thereof... many times. This isn't a terribly didactic tale, since it sometimes subverts the importance of tidiness, but it does show the rewards of trying to organize one's life. For that, Just a Mess is just the book for anyone with a few too many objects cluttering up the floor.