Rating: 
Summary: The Very Persistent Story
Review: This book is glorious. I find myself pondering passages at the oddest of times. I've read it aloud to my high school students and to friends over dinner. Saunders's prose is of the highest quality, witty, and exceedingly intelligent. Smith's illustrations are evocative and magical. This world of Frip, with its goats and its gappers and its three leaning shacks by the sea is a wonderful place to explore. The thinness of the book is deceptive. I have read it literally dozens of times at this point and always delight in some turn of phrase that I didn't fully appreciate before. The images are rich and multi-layered and just as much fun over which to pour. And then there is the lesson of the story. Never preachy, never saccharine. Though I suppose there are several messages from which you can take your pick. Ask for help when you need it. Don't believe the party line. Be kind to people, even when they don't really enjoy it. And love something that will love you back. No matter what the age of the reader, everyone needs to be reminded of those things sometimes. I would recommend this book to children and adults who are not boxed in by what they think adults whould read. Too many grown ups are scared of books with pictures. Read this aloud to friends and family and to yourself.
Rating:
Summary: The Very Persistent Story
Review: This book is glorious. I find myself pondering passages at the oddest of times. I've read it aloud to my high school students and to friends over dinner. Saunders's prose is of the highest quality, witty, and exceedingly intelligent. Smith's illustrations are evocative and magical. This world of Frip, with its goats and its gappers and its three leaning shacks by the sea is a wonderful place to explore. The thinness of the book is deceptive. I have read it literally dozens of times at this point and always delight in some turn of phrase that I didn't fully appreciate before. The images are rich and multi-layered and just as much fun over which to pour. And then there is the lesson of the story. Never preachy, never saccharine. Though I suppose there are several messages from which you can take your pick. Ask for help when you need it. Don't believe the party line. Be kind to people, even when they don't really enjoy it. And love something that will love you back. No matter what the age of the reader, everyone needs to be reminded of those things sometimes. I would recommend this book to children and adults who are not boxed in by what they think adults whould read. Too many grown ups are scared of books with pictures. Read this aloud to friends and family and to yourself.
Rating:
Summary: Let me put it this way...
Review: This very evening I discovered the joy of reading George Saunders...
"There were approximately fifteen hundred gappers living in the sea near Frip. Each Frip family had about ten goats. Therefore, there would normally be about five hundred gappers per yard, or fifty gappers per goat."
What is a gapper?
Well, it is this baseball-like, Velcro-type crustacean with multitudinous eyes, that crawls out of the ocean at night along with (give or take) 1,499 of its buddies, all intent upon attaching themselves to local goats in a burr-like fashion. Side effects? Serious immediate goat-lassitude followed by actual withering, and depletion of milk supply!
Exactly! Of course!
It's fabulous.
Oh man... it's been a long while since I got so caught up into one of these child/adult books, the last time being Salman Rushdie's excellent "Haroun And The Sea Of Stories."
This one is every bit as good, or better. And every bit as crazy.
Let me put it this way... I stumbled across this book in the store, sat down with it... read the whole thing, laughed... laughed some more... thought of many people I want to give this book to... and ended up purchasing five copies. One will be for my own re-reading.
It is hilarious, and meaningful all at once... as the slipcover says, it's an "adult story for children, a children's story for adults."
The illustrations are superb, and the quality of the book is impeccable... a work of art. It is a flawless imaginative work, that... while it makes you laugh at every second sentence, makes you realize that resourcefulness in the midst of undeserved adversity can really save the day! That selfishness is ugly... that neighbors ought to be... neighbors.
This little girl named Capable... she is a terrific role model for children.... and adults!
A brilliant work, and recommended without reservation. When you read this story to children the only question will be, who will love it more, you or them? Neither one loving it is simply an impossibility!
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