Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Valedictory, elegiac, and playfully absurd, this collection of sketches by inaugural U.K. Children's Laureate Blake offers a glimpse over the illustrator's shoulder as an unguarded creative process unfolds. The book is organized into eight thematic sections ("Deliveries from Elsewhere," "On the Wing," and more), illustrated in black ink and gray washes. One series, "Trip Hazards" freezes spectacularly graceless comic stumbles mid-flight, including a birdwatcher tumbling over a sitting fowl, and a chef tripping over a push broom while futilely gripping an impossibly tall wedding cake. Another section, "Wildlife Artists of the Year," features en plein air sketchers blissfully immersed (in water to paint shore birds, pointing a headlamp at a wide-eyed owl) as they try to capture the natural world. Unexplained except for each section's title, the drawings practically beg readers to invent a story. Through it all, the creator's signature ink line has a life of its own--sometimes graceful, sometimes antic, and always conjuring worlds from empty paper and an inimitable imagination. Ages 7--9. (Oct.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An intimate peek into the sketchbook of a legendary author/illustrator. An introductory note makes clear that while Blake is drawn to pet themes and personally salient motifs, readers should expect to find neither thesis nor throughline connecting the vignettes ahead. Instead, the eight sections that follow are entirely unrelated to one another, each filled with images that invite onlookers to both occupy the world as it's been reimagined and construct its context. In "Trip Hazards," clumsy bumblers topple mid-fall across four full-page spreads, while "Ten Things You Really Cannot Manage Without" features slice-of-life essentials like a "beach hut" and a "useful box." "Deliveries From Elsewhere" features suitably off-the-wall scenarios (characters ride grotesque monsters or pilot flying machines), whereas those in "Feet in the Water" prove perfectly ordinary. An art exhibition of sorts, this work is an introspective companion to the myriad others Blake has built his storied career on; the contents of this volume range widely, sometimes silly, often weird. Done in scribbly pen and ink over muted watercolor, his signature illustrations suit the sinister undercurrent that thrums drolly beneath his unique brand of oddball whimsy. As ever, this artist promises creative and madcap catastrophe, but readers can rest assured--the turn of each page offers unexpected (if occasionally macabre) delights, and the disagreeable stuff occurs squarely offstage. An aptly named exercise in imagination.(Picture book. 6-12) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
