When you make something secret, you make it special.
That was the bizarre lesson Mayor de Blasio — whose questionable fund-raising tactics are at the center of an ongoing criminal probe — delivered Saturday to a group of children at a Queens library.
Hizzoner read from the illustrated children’s book “Secret Pizza Party” at the Woodside branch of the Queens Library alongside library boss Dennis Walcott and City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer.
The poorly chosen yarn follows the exploits of a wily raincoat-clad raccoon who is overly enthusiastic about keeping secrets and stealing pizza.
“When you make something secret, you make it special,” the immoral masked mammal says. “Regular handshake: Boring. Secret handshake: Booyah!”
The eyebrow-raising book could barely keep the attention of the roomful of rambunctious kids, and may have left the mayor with a bad case of indigestion. He didn’t seem to recognize the unintended irony.
“If the raccoon was stealing pizza for a cause he believed in, do you think he was still breaking the law, necessarily?” one reporter asked as the mayor exited the library.
Another used the raccoon’s tale as a jumping off point to grill de Blasio about a Gov. Cuomo ally being probed for potential improper lobbying and undisclosed conflicts of interest involving an upstate power plant.
“What do you think of Joe Percoco’s secret pizza party?” the reporter asked.
De Blasio cracked a smile, but declined to address any pizza or raccoon-related inquiries.
The book, written by Adam Rubin and illustrated by Daniel Salmnieri, has received a mix of reviews online — with some parents questioning the lessons it holds.
“The book was neither fun nor cute,” mom Jen Bee wrote on Amazon. “Yeah, that’s not what I want to teach my child. It sounds like something a pedophile would say to their victim.”
The book is a fun read, according to Yelena Lungin, but she “didn’t like that we were supposed to cheer for the raccoon to steal pizza and get away with it.”
Much like the nocturnal nuisance he read about aloud, De Blasio’s moral compass has been questioned by critics.
The head investigator for the state Board of Elections alleges that the funneling of big money contributions through party committees to Senate candidates was a “willful and flagrant” move made by the mayor to evade contribution limits.
Several of de Blasio’s closest aides and allies were recently smacked with subpoenas by the offices of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.
On Friday, the mayor said that his fund-raising is only under a microscope because of politics — and ripped the election official who pushed for the probe as clueless.
Speaking on WNYC, he said people should be asking “how a state board of election official singled us out, apparently not understanding how state election law works, and then leaked their document to the media.”
Saturday wasn’t de Blasio’s first pizza-related faux pas.
The mayor caused a stir only a week into his term by using cutlery to chow down on a slice at a Staten Island pizza joint.
