Review by New York Times Review
THE average North American toddler grows up with almost daily exposure to lions, hippos and elephants - even though most children have no contact with such creatures beyond a glimpse behind a wall during the occasional trip to a PETA-approved city zoo. It is clearly the fault of picture books. Who wouldn't rather look at the wondrous form of a giraffe than that of any plain old Fido or Kitty? And what picture book illustrator wouldn't rather paint one? Not that I begrudge Ana Juan, the Spanish artist and writer ("The Night Eater"), one drop of paint for her giraffe. Or for her zebra, penguin, hippo and kangaroo. These animals, among others, co-star in Juan's latest picture book, "The Pet Shop Revolution," which tells the story of Mr. Walnut, a crotchety, mysterious and Vaguely abusive proprietor of a pet shop. The exotic, unhappy creatures he sells are carted off by out-of-town customers while locals keep their distance. But then one day, a girl named Mina loses her pet rabbit and is convinced Mr. Walnut is hiding it in his store. She sneaks inside with the help of the town's trusty ice-delivery boy, finds her missing pet and frees the rest of the captive beasts. Did I mention that Mr. Walnut wears a wig? It is a large, gray frizzy hairpiece with a founding-fathers ponytail, which the pet shop owner grooms each morning and, in a terrific detail, places atop the store's resident monkey's head at night. This wig disappears during Mina's rabbit rescue and the ensuing animal exodus, and Mr. Walnut, bald and humiliated, becomes a prisoner to his own vanity. Refusing to leave the confines of his shop, Mr. Walnut is reduced to begging his former captives for food and, improbably, they bring it to him. Eventually, and even more unbelievably, Mr. Walnut resolves his situation by surrounding himself with stuffed toy versions of the pet store's denizens, the creation of which causes him to forget about his bald pate. It's a big narrative leap, but it doesn't matter because the reader will be far too busy looking at Juan's gorgeous visuals. I'm a sucker for setting, and Juan's is terrific: a world that is part Edwardian London and part magic realism, with some 1950s-era technology thrown into the mix. The details are exquisite: bedposts shaped like devilish masks, the apt juxtaposition of a penguin with a tuxedoed mayor, a woman in a zebra fur coat with dainty mouse ears perched on its hood. The villain is likewise wonderful to behold, huge forearms covered with tattoos of his wares, impressive mustachios and bushy black eyebrows hiding beady eyes. Artfully painted in saturated acrylics, Juan's characters are slightly surreal and full of personality. The charmingly sparse backgrounds, line-drawn in colored pencil, are a departure from Juan's earlier work, and they reinforce the vibrancy and three-dimensionality of the splendid menagerie. Several similarly exotic creatures appear in "Stuck," the Northern Irish illustrator and writer Oliver Jeffers's newest extravaganza. An orangutan, for example. A rhinoceros. A blue whale. And all of them end up in a tree. Let me start over. "Stuck" is the story of Floyd, an orange-haired, plaid-shirted little boy, whose kite gets stuck in a tree. In order to dislodge it, he throws all manner of objects up there too: first his shoe, then his other shoe, then his cat, escalating at a rapid but satisfying pace, until not only are the rhino, orangutan and whale in the tree, but also a chair, a door, a semi truck, the milkman, a lighthouse . . . everything but the kitchen sink. No, including the kitchen sink. It's the "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" device, and it works brilliantly. But as with "The Pet Shop Revolution," it's not the what of the story that makes it so terrific, but the visual how. Jeffers is the master of the scribble: of a cloud, the leaves of the offending tree, the boy's hair, the orangutan's fur, and the burst of Floyd's frustration floating delicately above his head when things really start sticking. Jeffers gives these scribbles ample room with lots of white space, and his expert variation of scale and color keep each page full of energy. Speech bubbles of in-tree commentary ("Did you get up here the same way?") add an extra dose of hilarity to what is already a funny situation. The book ends simply and inevitably with the return of the kite. And Jeffers's penultimate drawing is as sweet as any image in the most sincere picture book in the world. But we know we are in the hands of an unflinching humorist: everything Floyd has thrown up the tree, animals, people and objects alike, stays stuck up there, sleepy and surprisingly content, casting a big scribbled shadow by the light of the moon. Lisa Brown is an illustrator, author and cartoonist. Her latest picture book is "Vampire Boy's Good Night."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 13, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
Floyd's kite is stuck in a tree, so to try to knock it down, he throws up first one shoe and then another. Stuck and stuck. Gradually, he throws increasingly large and unlikely objects at the tree to try to retrieve his kite all to no avail and when a fireman stops to offer assistance, Floyd throws him and the fire truck up, too. In the end, Floyd has an epiphany that releases the kite, but he fears that he is still forgetting something. With smooth pacing, Jeffers organizes the action into theatrical scenes, more than once suggesting the climax only to snatch it away and hurl ever more stuff into the burgeoning treetop. The humor is well calibrated to its intended young audience, who will happily grab at the red herrings and delight at the subsequent surprise turns. Jeffers' scribbly gestures and buoyant composition set a tone of whimsical hysteria, while the color palette reflects Floyd's alternating industry and frustration. With deceptive simplicity and sophisticated illustration, this comic look at problem solving will have wide appeal.--Barthelmess, Thom Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In an exuberantly absurd tale that recalls the old woman who swallowed a fly, a boy named Floyd goes to ridiculous lengths to remove his kite from a tree. Floyd tosses his sneakers, then his cat, into the leafy branches, and when they get stuck, too, he fetches a ladder. "He was going to sort this out once and for all... and up he threw it. I'm sure you can guess what happened." Each spread pictures Floyd pitching another item into the tree and growing increasingly frustrated: a bike, a kitchen sink, the milkman, a fire truck, and "a curious whale, in the wrong place at the wrong time... and they all got stuck." Jeffers (The Incredible Book Eating Boy) pictures the extravagant accumulation in abstract pencil-and-gouache doodles, with hand-lettered text to set a conversational tone. The tall, narrow format reinforces the tree's height in comparison to small, stick-figure Floyd. Jeffers's droll resolution-the kite comes down, although afterward Floyd "could have sworn there was something he was forgetting"-is testament to the boy's single-mindedness and the chaos he leaves in his wake. Ages 3-5. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-Floyd has a problem: his kite is stuck in a tree. Employing kid logic, he throws his favorite shoe to dislodge the wayward object-to no avail. The imaginative hero fetches a host of other items: a friend's bicycle, the kitchen sink, a long-distance lorry, the house across the street, a curious whale ("in the wrong place at the wrong time"). Alas, each item joins its predecessors, lodged in the foliage. Jeffers's deadpan descriptions and the ludicrous scale of Floyd's selections are laugh-out-loud hilarious. As the child carries the house on his head, his neighbor leans out the window, commenting, simply: "Floyd?" Then there is the incongruity between expectation and reality. When he retrieves a ladder, firemen, and finally a saw, readers will surely expect climbing or cutting, but no. Everything gets pitched up, including the light bulb that hovers over the child's head, just before he achieves success. The tree, which continually changes color (and therefore, mood), is a dense, scribbled, layered specimen, perfect for harboring the odd assemblage. The text appears to be hand-lettered, as if written by a youngster. In concert with the quirky, mixed-media caricatures, supported by stick legs, it yields a childlike aesthetic sure to tickle the funny bones of its target audience-and of the adults who share the story with youngsters.-Wendy Lukehart, Washington DC Public Library (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
(Picture book. 3-6)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
