Roo Discovers the Value of an Uncluttered Room in Oh, Bother! Someone's Messy!

When it comes to keeping things neat and tidy, I am not exactly a Felix Unger. Keeping one’s room clean is a theme that comes up rather often in picture books, and I always empathize with the character whose messy room is getting out of control. In the book Oh, Bother! Someone’s Messy!, written by Betty Birney and illustrated by Nancy Stevenson, that someone is Roo, the youngest resident of the Hundred-Acre Wood. It comes as little surprise that this rambunctious youngster isn’t too keen on cleaning up, but this is not a situation that is to the liking of his mother, Kanga. Something must be done.

This book reminds me a bit of a story from one of the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books. That intermediate series involved a magical, mirthful woman with a knack for knowing just what is needed to resolve a behavioral problem in one of the neighborhood children who frequent her house. In one installment, she encouraged the mother of an extremely messy child to allow the mess in his room to build up, to the point that his only way out would be to clean things up. The strategy worked, with a little help from a very alluring parade organized by Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle to make him especially anxious to go outside.

Roo’s room never gets to the inescapable point, but Kanga does decide to take a similar approach. She’ll let Roo mess up his room, and eventually, it’ll stop being fun and start being a bother. That’s her thinking, anyway, and her thinking turns out to be pretty wise. Free reign to make a mess seems like a dream come true at first, but a couple of hours of hard play with Tigger and Pooh on a rainy afternoon causes him to think otherwise, especially after the mud pies he brings in cause everything to become dirty and gooey. What’s more, when he leaves the house, stuffy Owl and gloomy Eeyore note that he’s tracking his toys all over the woods, and Piglet won’t let him bring his stuff in his spick and span house.

Piglet definitely does come across as a Felix Unger here, which I found a little odd, since Rabbit is the one who is usually so persnickety about such things. Piglet is tidy, but he doesn’t usually complain much if other people aren’t. But Rabbit doesn’t turn up in this book at all; maybe he was on vacation, forcing Piglet to step in as the Wood’s biggest neatnik. Christopher Robin isn’t involved in this one either, which I don’t mind, as it demonstrates that Pooh and the gang are capable of solving problems on their own once in a while.

While I don’t think that it’s absolutely necessary for a house to be quite as spotless as Piglet’s, Oh, Bother! Someone’s Messy! shows that a little organization can go a long way toward making a home - and a bedroom - more livable.