Mr. and Mrs. God in the Creation Kitchen
by Nancy Wood; illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering
When you've been married for an eternity, you pretty much live in your own universe, and you never know what the two of you can concoct together, especially if you're the God family.
Wood gives us a Mr. God who likes the big stuff -- stars, dinosaurs, explosions -- and who's man enough to admit the odd Jurassic blooper. Mrs. God bakes an earth whose crust isn't quite cooled. She whips up candy-colored fishies, only to see Mr. God's pelican gobble them up. Whoops. He makes it up to her, though, with a spectacularly huge whale.
If we're made in their image, it's easy to see why: they may grouse a bit, but when they're in sync, watch out.
Basil Ering conjures up a kitchen crammed with overflowing pots and erupting ovens; the corpulent Mr. and Mrs. God float in space heavily textured with acrylic paint in ethereal whites, grays and heavy blues. Spots of color draw our gaze to jars of eyeballs and boxes of claws. The whale floats so far off the page, we can only make out a lumpy section of tale overhanging the frying pan. The odd-shaped jars and Rube Goldberg-like kitchen gadgets aren't quite what you'd find at Target, and they fizzle and steam as Mr. and Mrs. God putter contentedly over molds of a doughy man and woman.
They're creative, those Gods, but messy. At least they wear oven mitts.
This tongue-in-cheek take on our origins shouldn't rile religious folks, but it may irk the godless types who want a more exacting scientific explanation than one that still places our solar system -- not to mention us -- at the apex of Creation. I suspect it's the latter group who will evolve a humorless gene about the whole thing.
Rating: *\*\*\*\
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