No Clean Clothes

Lacey never puts her clothes in the laundry hamper, until once morning she goes to get dressed for school she finds she has . . . no clean clothes!

Her mom tells Lacey to wear a shirt her grandma gave her — a weird one that says: “Kiss me, I’m perfect!” Lacey just knows the other kids are going to make fun of her.

On the way to school, Lacey meets a cat, a dog, and an eagle. They all read her T-shirt, then give her a kiss! Then she meets a moose, who gives her a large wet moose kiss, right up the front of her face and over the top of her head. Lacey is thrilled — maybe this shirt is wonderful, not weird! But when her classmate reads the shirt and gives her a peck on the cheek: YUCK! BOY KISS!

Robert Munsch wrote this story for a girl from Stewart, B.C., a place full of all the wildlife in the book! The day he visited the school there, the kids could not go out for recess because there were two grizzly bears on the playground. Lacey was in grade one and was wearing a t-shirt that said, “KISS ME, I’M PERFECT!” This classic Munsch tale is now reissued with a bright new cover design.

Telling stories is what Robert Munsch does — and loves best. From the first time he stood in front of a group of children as a student teacher at a nursery school in 1972, his jaunty, animated presentation grabbed hold of the imaginations of his listeners and he hasn't let go since.

Before he puts a story to paper, Munsch spends up to three years telling, revising and fine-tuning the tale in front of his rapt audiences. “I figured out once that the stories the kids kept requesting came to two percent of my total output,” he says. But once he discovered how to capture the spontaneity of his narratives in written form, he was on his way to being a successful and sought-after author.

Munsch has published dozens of books in both Canada and the United States. His first efforts, Mud Puddle and The Dark, were published in 1979 and the runaway bestseller Love You Forever was first published in 1986. All of his characters are believably spunky, stubborn and endearing children, while his story lines tend to challenge conventions and stereotypes.

Munsch describes his stories as “middle of the road taboo.” When he uses words like pee and underwear, “the kids go absolutely bananas.” As for the parents, “Eighty percent think it's really neat; the other twenty percent ask, 'How could you?'"

Robert Munsch lives in Ontario, Canada, and continues to perform his own tales — often without advance notice — for day care centers, schools, and libraries.