This Captain Underpants–style Stepping Stones series is half text, half illustration, and 100 percent humor.

The creator of Goodnight Goon and The Runaway Mummy pulls from his mad-scientist brain a kid so attracted to slime, muck, dirt, and yuck he could only be called Icky Ricky. And uh-oh! Icky Ricky is in a mess. Why? Well, you see . . .

He’s digging a hole to China, in his backyard.

He found a free toilet in someone’s garbage. (Score!)

He fell into a pigpen . . . with a muddy mega-pig.

Icky Ricky is up to his eyeballs in trouble—and ick!