A Whale of a Picture Book

I don’t get a lot of pictures books sent my way here at Beatrice, but I heard that Mac Barnett, one of the directors of 826LA, the Los Angeles outpost of Dave Eggers’s creative writing centers for children and young adults, had collaborated with Adam Rex on something called Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem, and I was intrigued enough to check it out. I’m so glad I did: Imagine a particularly excellent McSweeney’s item, geared towards a precocious eight-year-old. With illustrations that are just as smart and sly.

The deadpan humor is fantastic; frankly, I think grown-ups may well wind up loving this book more than kids—but I’m not suggesting that kids won’t get a kick out of it. They’ll love the silly pictures, and if they don’t laugh at all the jokes when you read it to them, well, give ’em time.

15 July 2009 | read this |