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 hilariously 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.)

Howard Pearlstein is the author of three picture books and is an advertising creative director who has worked on some of the world’s most popular brands, including Toyota, Verizon, and Mitsubishi. A California native, Howard now lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with his wife, Debi. Howard has three daughters: Amanda, Jacquie, and Emily, who live across the country, and one dog, Maeby, who still lives at home. Susanna Covelli was born in a small town in Piedmont, Italy, earned an MA in architecture, and followed her passion for art and decided to attend a specialization course in both traditional and digital illustration at Scuola Internazionale di Comics in Turin. Her art expresses her own imagination and inspiration from nature, and she has always been attracted by sinuous shapes, baroque style, and out-of-the-ordinary perspectives.