Timothy Cox Will Not Change His Socks

My 7 year old and I enjoyed this funny book very much!

According to some theories, infants and young children eventually resolve a basic conflict between the desire to make things messy and to make things clean. According to some of my friends, there are adults who've never really worked this through. This might explain the prevalence of men (and some women) who don't change their underwear and socks daily, or who say they do, but lie (I reveal no names here). In any event, children and adults alike have a fascination with dirt, so I'm not surprised that the author's 3rd grade daughter suggested the basic idea for this story about a boy who wears the same socks for 30 straight days. Timothy Cox has two motivations: Pure curiosity, and a determination to persevere no matter what the reaction. As he says to his constant companion, Walt the dachshund, "'...I'm the type who gets an idea and then follows it through." On day two, other kids are wrinkling their noses, and the next morning he receives an anonymous letter. A registered letter came early next day. It was brief. It was blunt. And it had this to say: `Timothy, Timothy, Timothy Cox, won't you consider please, changing your socks? Your friends and your neighbors are getting fed up!' `And it's only day three,' Timmy said to his pup. He's ordered away from school, and, although his parents initially insist that Timothy can do no wrong ("If you really knew Timmy, that's not what you'd say"), they eventually banish him from the house. Author Robert Kinert's rhyming narration of the progressively wilder reactions to the increasingly smelly Timothy becomes a screwball comedy of one boy's determination to see things through. As the days go by the smell gets so bad that the police, reporters in helicopters, fire fighters, and the scouts judge try to get Timothy Cox to change his socks! Kinert's rhymes deftly convey both action and emotion, and the poetry is generally unstrained and clever. In concert with the progression of events, Stephen Gammell's illustrations begin restrained but get more and more cluttered and askew, highlighted for me by a high contrast black and yellow picture of three loudspeaker trucks racing down a hilly road. If anything, the book should have included more of these crazy scenes; the book has a bit too much white space early on and Gammell appears more skilled with them than with the faces we see earlier. The green, oozy splashes of green connoting the smell are very convincing and show his facility with color and technique. It all ends happily, of course, with the socks on display (behind tightly locked doors) and the townspeople commemorating the perseverance of the now hygienic Timothy Cox. There's a mini-moral lesson at the conclusion, which I thought both an unnecessary bow to adult concerns, and a departure from the previous spirit of curiosity and individuality. Still, Kinert and Gammell convincingly tell this very tall tale, and the clean/dirty conundrum is explored in a very entertaining way.