This article first appeared in the NY Journal of Books on 16 July 2024.

Monica Arnaldo is the Canadian creator of numerous children’s picture books, including Mr. S (2023), which was a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Literature, and Are You a Cheeseburger (2021), which won the Blue Spruce Award. Her newest creation is The Museum of Very Bad Smells, a scratch-and-sniff page turner that Kirkus Reviews calls “a real stinker, in the best possible sense.”

The book follows a hamster museum attendant as they search with other animal employees for the thief of the museum’s most prized exhibit: the World Famous Rotten Egg. Told in caricature Agatha Christie fashion, “Everybody is a suspect.”

A children’s book that successfully delivers icky scratch-and-sniff smells is sure to be a winner, no matter what the plot line. Considering Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, one looks forward to the allusively humorous plot possibilities for The Museum of Very Bad Smells, which promotes itself as “a Dare to Scratch ’n’ Sniff Mystery.”

Children and caretakers will enjoy the simple yet details-packed illustrations, particularly the double-spread map-like overviews of the museum as the lead hamster attendant runs around, looking for clues to reveal the Rotten Egg thief.

Unfortunately, in my copy of the book, only two of the five scratch-and-sniff surfaces smelled at all. Those that did only faintly represented the powerfully undesirable aromas evoked by their images and boasted by the book.

Though they may introduce yucky smells like “dung” and “wet dog,” the animal characters are arbitrary in species and design, with histories that are presumed to be known but are not elucidated. This is problematic in any story that proclaims itself a mystery, even ones created for the entertainment of children. It also misses the opportunity to produce a picture book that might entertain its adult purchasers as much as the children they buy for.

The Museum of Very Bad Smells will, no doubt, be interesting to children for the first read or two. It will also, no doubt, be disappointing to children who open the book to find that the smells “don’t work.” For this reason, you may want to purchase the book in a store where you can test it out, rather than online.