Food has a funny (in both senses) way of disappearing in Julia Sarcone-Roach's picture books. First there was The Bear Ate Your Sandwich, and now there's the equally cheeky/clever The Ice Cream Vanishes, in which a squirrel narrator proudly takes credit for the disappearing treat.
Squirrel, who aspires to be a magician who can make snacks disappear, snaps up an ice cream cone that's lying on the ground: "This might be the snack I've been looking for." Squirrel runs off to notify "my assistant," Bear, and sets down the delicacy. When the friends look for it, the cone is still there but the ice cream is gone: "I put it right here!" insists Squirrel. "On this hot rock in the sun! It's vanished!" Squirrel attributes this not to meltage but to an ambition realized--"I was a magician at last!"--and sets off for more ice cream: why not repeat the trick for an audience?
As in The Bear Ate Your Sandwich, the humor in The Ice Cream Vanishes stems from the clash between what the narrator says and what readers see, leaving it to Sarcone-Roach's dynamic mixed-media art in sunrise colors to tell the truth. In the book's best visual gag, Squirrel discovers "a cave full of snacks" (an ice cream truck) containing "piles of top hats and party hats" (stacks of empty cones). Kidding aside, the book is an ode to friendship: ultimately, Bear scores a treat while enabling clueless Squirrel ("Ta-da! The ice cream vanished!") to realize a dream. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author