Tidying Up With Mama! Llama, Llama Mess Mess Mess by Anna Dewdney and Reed Duncan

Llama Llama is in his room.
Cars and trucks go HONK! and ZOOM!

Little Llama in his playtime zone, imagining a race between his toys on a track under the bed and the chairs.

Mama Llama calls upstairs.

"Time to pick up all your toys!"
Why is Mama making noise?

Llama Llama is in his race car zone, and Mama Llama is apparently entering her tidying-up-time zone,

Their zones are colliding!

It's a problem of priorities. Toddlers want to play and have fun, and moms want 1) to walk across their floors without danger and 2) to finish their chores with a pleasantly tidy house so that they can have fun. The final goal is the same--but how to get to that goal for both is the problem.

Mom tries the old "what if everybody did" line of debate. Little Llama won't pick up? She won't pick up. She actually lets things like dirty clothes and clean clothes drop to the floor together. She goes on strike for the morning, and by afternoon all the horizontal surfaces are quite crowded. Llama Llama's bed is still unmade and too rumply and bumpy with toys to sit on. Dirty plates, pots, and pans crowd the table and the kitchen counters. The sofa cushions remain a fort, with brooms and mops for cannons. The fort is fun, but when they're done, there's no comfy place to sit. In fact, there's no good place to play! Llama Llama looks around. What has happened to his house?

Clutter, chaos, and distress.
No more Llama mess! Mess! MESS!

Grown-up llamas clean, that's true.
But little ones can pick up, too!

It's time for a little llama to pitch in and tidy-up or suffer the consequences, in Reed Duncan's latest entry in the series, Llama Llama Mess Mess Mess (Viking, 2019), and luckily Little Llama gets the message. Author Duncan makes comic but telling use of the "too much of a good thing" theme that Lillian and Russell Hoban used with exquisite success in their classic tot tale, Bread and Jam for Frances (I Can Read Level 2), and the Hobans' book, with Frances' final admission, "What I am is full of JAM," would make a great go-along with this latest in the beloved Llama Llama series, well illustrated in the style of creator Anna Dewdney by artist JT Morrow.