This Book Is Not for You: A Picture Book Without Any Ninjas, Zombies, or Aliens

CBC Hot of The Press August 2024 Title

With dynamic illustrations by Susanna Covelli that hilariously contradict the story, This Book Is Not for You is told by Howard Pearlstein in the voice of an oblivious narrator who explains why this book is not for you.

Are you a kid?
Are you reading this book?
If so, drop it like a hot potato.
Seriously, skipper.
This book is not for you.

Packed with everything a kid could never want—nothing funny, gross, cool, cute, or silly—this picture book is really not for you. There definitely aren’t any monsters or ninjas, and you can forget about aliens. You probably won’t even like this story. But you’re going to read it anyway, aren’t you?

The narrator, a curmudgeonly man with an impressive mustache, is delightfully unaware of the funny, gross, cool, cute, and silly things happening around him and his anxious dog (who is very aware). Whenever the narrator speaks, monsters, aliens, and all the things that a kid would like jump off the page. So if this book is not for you, who is it for? (The answer is absolutely not at the end.)