Debug This Book - Perfect Picture Book Friday #PPBF

2 minutes ago
4 min read

This is a raucous, fun metafiction picture book about a bug that appears in a child's story and the mayhem and silliness which ensues. With a light nod to personal responsibility, it offers a strategy and a solution that can be applied throughout our lives, not just to electronics.

Book cover - two kids, an exterminator, plumber, and farmer look over the edge of a book's text at translucent bug, enlarged by a magnifying glass.

Debug This Book

Author: Omar Abed

Illustrator: Julie Rowan-Zoch

Publisher: Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books (June 30, 2026)

Ages: 4-8

Fiction

Themes:

Puns, "code bug," metafiction, interactive, and humor.

Synopsis:

A little boy enlists the help of various people, including the most effective person of all—the reader—when he discovers a bug is sabotaging his story in this laugh-out-loud picture book perfect for fans of Press Here.

Cody has just written an exciting story on his computer that he’d love to share with the reader—a.k.a. you!—full of adventures and intrigue and—AACK! What’s that? A bug? How did that get here? No worries, an exterminator is here to help! But wait, it’s not that kind of bug. It’s a code bug! It can’t be fixed by an exterminator, a handyman, or even a farmer.

Luckily, a programmer appears, but even she can’t debug the computer. She and Cody need help…from the reader! Maybe if the reader turns pages really slowly or really fast the bug can’t keep up. Or if they read in a funny voice, the bug won’t understand. Can Cody and the reader find a solution before catastrophic system failure?!

Opening Lines:

Hello World!

You're just in time!

I'm Cody, and I just

finished a magnificent

story for you . . .

. . . full of exhilarating

adventure, stellar

superheroes, and-

What I LOVED about this book:

This fun opening of a young boy's creation of an adventure story seems perfectly normal, though it holds a bit of foreshadowing which might be overlooked as readers focus on the fun vignette images of the boy performing exciting parts of his story.

Internal spread - on the left, a young boy sitting at a desk proudly showing his story on the monitor behind him. On the right, extending along lines originating from the monitor are vignettes of the boy battling a sea monster, vertically climbing a mountain, springing into action as a superhero, and creating a chemical reaction in a lab.

Text © Omar Abed, 2026. Image © Julie Rowan-Zoch, 2026.

Until, you turn the page . . .

Internal spread - a section of the story's text fills the spread, while the word "library" is caught on the fisihing line of the outline of a little bug, as the boy glances behind himself.

Text © Omar Abed, 2026. Image © Julie Rowan-Zoch, 2026.

Now all manner of hijinks, puns, and problems occur. A pest exterminator jumps into action to battle "the bug." In the process, dislodges a few more words and gets into a fencing battle with the bug. Then a handywoman tries to fix the "broken book," and pries loose many more words and letters, while the bug shoves words at the exterminator with a bulldozer. When the boy yells, "It's growing out of control," a farmer arrives and hoses everything down. Words and people jumble and bumble everywhere, as the bug happily hops away. Wonderfully playing off Omar Abed's puns, Julie Rowan-Zoch's illustrations are colorful and inventive.

I love, for instance, Julie Rowan-Zoch's representation of a computer glitch ('programing' bug) and the resulting static, as the boy asks the reader to help fix his book by waving their hand to "erase the bug." Instead of being sucessful, blue and white squares appear and text and numbers fall to the bottom of the page.

Internal spread - giant block text "error," as the characters become blurry, pixelated, or patchy. While the little bug jackhammers the "E."

When a programmer arrives and tells the boy to look for patterns, in order to debug the book, the boy begs the reader to stop turning the pages (a little reminiscent of The Monster at the End of this Book). I love that the little bug scowls, a hand on hip, and holds a "go" sign. With each page turn, everything continues to fall apart, as, tucked within each spread, we see the bug using scissors and a lawnmower, riding a snail and surfing on a wave of words, letters, and pixel squares. Kids will love looking for the bug on each spread and laughing at his antics.

However, nothing he asks the reader to try works. Finally, the boy suggests the age old cure for technology. A solution that not only requires reader assistance to pull off, but only works with the reader's help. A solution bound to make a few adults chuckle (or groan). The fun ending beautifully and satisfyingly wraps back to the beginning in a circular fashion. A final author's note offers historic and current examples of debugging. This is a super fun interactive, humorous picture book giving kids a mini look at debugging computers, other machines, and non-electronic parts of their lives.

Resources:

what would you imagine a computer bug would look like? Draw a picture of your created bug or use recycled items and craft supplies to build your bug. What other bugs can you imagine - book bugs, shoe bugs, clock bugs . . . What mischief do your bugs cause?
have you ever tried to figure out why something wasn't working? Like a TV remote or a routine? Check out PBS Activities for Thinking Like a Computer Scientist for ways to debug your routine and for some fun debugging games and activities.

did you figure out why the farmer was carrying around a bucket of worms?

🎈🎉 GIVEWAY for Debug This Book 🎉🎈

Julie Rowan-Zoch is offering one lucky reader a book!

- Simply comment below or on Monday's interview of Julie Rowan-Zoch, or both, to be entered in the random drawing on August 7th.

- Be sure to say where (if) you shared the post (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Bluesky), and I'll add additional entries for you.

- Sorry US residents only.

If you missed my interview with Julie Rowan-Zoch on Monday, find it (here).

This post is part of a series of blog posts by authors and KidLit bloggers called Perfect Picture Book Fridays. For more picture book suggestions and resources see Susanna Leonard Hill's Perfect Picture Books.