Hey, Al

Rating:
Summary: Great book for teaching values!
Review: "Paradise lost is sometimes heaven found" is the closing line in Hey, Al, a wonderful book that has a timeless moral for both kids and adults. Al is a janitor who is not happy with how is life is going. He lives in a room with his dog, Eddie, who is also not happy with his situation. One day a bird appears at the window promising to bring them to a better place, "no worries, no cares". Of course, something that sounds that good probably isn't.

This book is definitely an entertaining story. The pictures are colorful and very detailed. Kids will love looking at them and pointing out all the different birds and laugh at the silly transformation that Al and Eddie go through. I think they will also get the story, that what you have is usually better than what you lust for. Everyone, at some point in their life, dreams about something better. This book is a great reality check for us, giving a serious message in a kid's book.

Rating:
Summary: Great book for teaching values!
Review: "Paradise lost is sometimes heaven found" is the closing line in Hey, Al, a wonderful book that has a timeless moral for both kids and adults. Al is a janitor who is not happy with how is life is going. He lives in a room with his dog, Eddie, who is also not happy with his situation. One day a bird appears at the window promising to bring them to a better place, "no worries, no cares". Of course, something that sounds that good probably isn't.

This book is definitely an entertaining story. The pictures are colorful and very detailed. Kids will love looking at them and pointing out all the different birds and laugh at the silly transformation that Al and Eddie go through. I think they will also get the story, that what you have is usually better than what you lust for. Everyone, at some point in their life, dreams about something better. This book is a great reality check for us, giving a serious message in a kid's book.

Rating:
Summary: Almost Trapped in Paradise!
Review: A janitor named Al and his faithful friend, a dog named Eddie live in New York in a cramped, rather dingy apartment. They are pretty sick of it and Eddie gripes about it to Al. One day they fall into a bit of magic and escape the world that they are tired of and end up on a flying island in the air that is populated by all kinds of fantastic tropical birds. They feel like they are in paradise but, of course, they find out that paradise isn't all it's cracked up to be.
What I love about this book is the wonderful illustrations, full of bright colors and gentle humour, and the dialog that sounds just the way a janitor from the West Side of New York City might. I love the way Al and Eddie learn to make their lives better by the end of the story. What I don't particularly like is that the "moral" seems to say that you really shouldn't dream of paradise on earth because it's not okay to kick back and luxuriate and live in leisure because that's just not naural for human beings. It's just too preachy and simplistic. Why can't magic take you to paradise and it all turns out GREAT? Why do we have to feel like if we're not struggling along and doing what we've always done, then it's going to come back and haunt us eventually? I did like the way the book emphasized how precious friendship is and how lost we are without it.
This is a book for little ones and they will love the pictures and characters. They will love, as I do, the friendship between Al and Eddie. It got the 1987 Caldecott medal for Illustrations for a reason! I think it's a good book but I was bummed that Al and Eddie couldn't have their cake and eat it, too. I mean if a giant tucan can hoist you aloft to a fantasy island, why can't the fantasy be perfect?!

Rating:
Summary: Critical Reflection
Review: A short book for small children about a janitor and his dog Eddie who wish for a better life. A great bird comes and takes him to an island paradise floating in the sky. But, they soon find themselves turning into birds and they wish to return to their apartment in New York. The illustrator was Richard Egielski and the book won the 1987 Caldecott Medal for best illustrations in a book for children.

Rating:
Summary: This book is fun to read!!
Review: Hey, Al, by Arthur Yorinks and Richard Egielski, is a story about Al and Eddie, the dog, going to paradise.
Al, a nice, quiet, janitor, lived in a small but very neat apartment on the West Side of New York City with his faithful dog, Eddie. They were always struggling. Eddie hoped for a house with a backyard.
All that changed one morning when Al was startled by a huge bird said, "tommorow I will bring you to paradise." The bird offers Al and Eddie a change. The next morning, both are ready and waiting in the bathroom.the bird carries them to the paradise.
The theme of this story is that "your own home is the best place to be." Al and Eddie were much happier in their own house than in the paradise. Everyone will like this book, because it has beautiful pictures and ideas.

Rating:
Summary: Hey yourself!
Review: I was eight years old when this book came out in 1986. Before I even knew that this book existed I used to play a great game with my fellow kidlets. Everyone got onto the bed and someone below the bed was a huge alligator named Al. The goal was to stick your head over the side of the bed and yell, "Hey, Al!", and avoid getting grabbed. When I saw the book, "Hey, Al", I was disappointed to find that there weren't any alligators involved. The similarities to my favorite game were limited, but there was one thing that was the same. That heart stopping feeling you got when you stuck your head over the side, not knowing what you'd find or when you'd get grabbed... that's the feeling you get after reading, "Hey, Al".

Al's just your normal janitor living with his dog in a one room apartment in New York. As the book says, he's, "a nice man, a quiet man, a janitor". Eddie, Al's dog and partner, is fed up with their life at the moment but there isn't much the two can do about it. One day, while Al's shaving in the bathroom, a huge blue bird sticks its head in the window. The bird promises that if Al merely comes with him he'll find a place without any worries and cares. The next day, Al and Eddie wait patiently in the bathroom and the bird arrives to fly them up up up to an island in the sky. Once there the two eat and drink and swim and sunbathe all day. It's a little paradise. But this world starts to go terribly terribly wrong when Al wakes up one day to find that both he and Eddie are turning into birds. Suddenly the honeymoon is over and the two friends must fly for their lives back to their little apartment in New York to return to normal. In the end, the two friends are a little wiser and a little happier with their lot.

Author Arthur Yorinks and illustrator Richard Egielski were great fans of the weird dream-like picture book. I don't know if you're at all familiar with their similarly peculiar and far more odd "Louis the Fish", but "Hey, Al" is written (and drawn) in very much the same vein. I was slightly disturbed by "Hey, Al" when I read it as a kid and that feeling has persisted in the eighteen years since I last looked at it. I think illustrator Egielski gives a nod to the otherworldly island paradise Al and Eddie end up in when he draws into his scene of birds welcoming the visitors a dodo with human hands and a walking stick (much as you would find in the original Tenniel drawing of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"). Somehow the combination of bright colors and an ever so slightly off narrative gives the book that otherworldly quality that made it so unique when it was first published. The range of birds available on the island (everything from ostriches and pink flamingos to penguins and puffins) help as well.

Kids will love speculating whether or not the other birds on the sunny isle were once human too. What is clear in the end, however, is the small still moral that staying true to one's self is better than all the riches in the world. The final line in the book is the undeniable statement, "Paradise lost is sometimes Heaven found". A little light philosophy for a toddler's growing mind.


Rating:
Summary: This book is fun to read!!
Review: This book had a very imaginative and fun beginning and middle. But then it just abruptly ended and was over. My 5 year old boy likes long chapter books, and then he likes short books like this to be read over and over again. He hasn't wanted to read this one again.

Rating:
Summary: Not one to read over and over
Review: This book had a very imaginative and fun beginning and middle. But then it just abruptly ended and was over. My 5 year old boy likes long chapter books, and then he likes short books like this to be read over and over again. He hasn't wanted to read this one again.

Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous Illustrations and a Timeless Story of Values
Review: This book won the Caldecott Medal as the best illustrated children's book of 1987. The wistful, bright water colors will entrance you and your child as you follow this excursion into fantasy.

Al, who is a janitor, lives in a one room, one bathroom apartment on the West Side of New York City. His only companion is his loyal dog, Eddie. Not only is the place small, it is not very neat and tidy. Eddie yearns vocally for a house with a back yard.

All this changes one morning when Al is startled by a huge rainbow-beaked toucan-like bird poking his head into the bathroom while Al prepares for work. The bird offers Al and Eddie a change. The next morning, both are ready and waiting in the bathroom.

The bird carries them to a misty island high in the sky filled with beautiful pools, waterfalls, vegetation, birds, and butterflies. "Unbelievable" is their reaction. "They never had it so good." They lazed in pools of water, and ate wonderful ripe fruit. What a change from a small apartment!

But one morning, Al and Eddie started to turn into birds. Al said, "I don't want to be a bird. I'd rather mop floors!"

They head back, flapping their wings. Eddie tires and falls into the sea. Al barely gets to the apartment, where he is heartbroken over Eddie's loss. But Al has regained his human form in the process.

Then, Eddie returns, having swum from where he dropped into the ocean back to the shore.

Al realizes that "Paradise lost is sometimes Heaven found."

The last scene shows Al starting to paint the apartment a bright yellow as Eddie looks on.

The story follows the general theme of many children's stories where the reality of experiencing something more that has been yearned for makes the characters realize the greater value of what they already have had. You will find this theme in stories as diverse as Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew.

Naturally, this story is a set-up to help you and your child discuss and count your blessings, including each other. You can also relate the story back to experiences about being glad to return home from a trip or a vacation, even though everyone had a wonderful time.

Put what you have in perspective of the lesser alternatives, and strive to make the best of what you do have!