Editorial Review

“Eager to help his overworked, stressed mother during the pre-Passover spring cleaning, a little boy invents a super vacuum-type machine that does more than a clean sweep.

Wearing a baseball cap and circle-shaped glasses, the round-faced, google-eyed Izzy is a whiz at creating all things science in his room, which is filled with cookie crumbs and other leftover foods. While Mom takes a nap, Izzy promises to have everything neat, clean and free of hametz (foods unacceptable during Passover) by using his ‘Super-McDuper Passover McClean’ machine. It works like a charm in his bedroom, where everything is eaten by McClean, whirled and swirled, washed and dried and then spit out and put back in place. But cleaning the living room becomes more complicated with a McClean malfunction that first swallows everything in sight and then, with Izzy’s tinkering, spits everything out upside down. ‘Izzy jammed on REVERSE. / And reverse did the trick! That McClean was so slick, / Turned the whole room right over and did it real quick.’ Subdued watercolors create nevertheless zany illustrations to accompany the Prelutsky-style rhymes, presenting a confident and seriously earnest youngster working out his experimental mishaps to achieve a sparkling success.

A humorous if silly way to introduce the concept of removing any leavened foods from the home as part of pre-holiday preparation."