The morning that Father Mooner sleeps in, Mortimer helps him get ready for work by making his lunch. While father rushes around, shaving, showering and dressing, Mortimer loudly counts down the minutes and prepares an enormous sandwich that grows larger and more peculiar with each passing minute.
Peanut butter, pickles and cheese all get added until the sandwich is so large Mortimer needs a garbage bag to wrap it.
Like the other Mooner books, this one has a theme based on time – counting down the minutes from 10 to “Blast Off.” There is also a role reversal, as Mortimer keeps urging his father to hurry up so he doesn’t miss his bus.
As always, John Bianchi’s illustrations add a gentle hilarity to the story — father runs around the house in his polka dot underwear, Mortimer’s frog ends up in the sandwich by accident, and a gooey slice of pie ends up in father’s briefcase when the lunch bag gets too full.
And, of course, there is a lovely plot twist at the end of the story — it turns out that it’s Saturday, not a workday.
"Mortimer Mooner Makes Lunch" is one of Bungalo Books’ most successful picture books — having sold 250,000 copies to date.
While the text has a lovely rhythm to it like a good read aloud should, teachers like it because each page presents a different verb for the word “said.” As he does his countdown, Mortimer shouts, thunders, roars, announces, declares, reports, yells, hollers, and calls out.
It’s a fun book that will be read again and again
This multi-touch edition has no distracting sounds or animation — it’s an ebook meant to be read aloud — but the story is followed by a light-hearted multiple-choice quiz and a photographic slide show of some Mooner-like situations the author experienced as a kid.
Accelerated Reader supported.
ATOS book level: 2.8
Interest level: lower grades
AR Points: .5
Rating: 3.5/4.0
Word count: 349
