Review by New York Times Review
A mouse, a jackass and a monkey discover something flat and rectangular, with a hard cover and soft pages inside. "Do you blog with it?" the jackass wonders. No, and it can't text or tweet, either. A spread in which the jackass reads this mystery object with growing delight "is one of the nicest sequences in recent picture books," our reviewer, Adam Gopnik, said.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 5, 2010]
Review by Booklist Review
Smith throws down his gauntlet in the ongoing debate over digital versus print in this spare offering. A donkey (jackass) with a laptop and a monkey with a hardcover book discuss the merits of their preferred formats. How do you scroll down? the donkey asks. Do you blog with it? Can you make the characters fight? To each question, the monkey offers an answer that riffs on this small, square picture book's title. At one point, the monkey shoves a page into his companion's hands, showing a story about a pirate. Too many words, the donkey responds, and he quickly transcribes the story as LJS: rrr! K? lol! / JIM: :( ! :). Unimpressed, the monkey continues to build his case until his big-eared mate converts to print so enthusiastically that he vows to keep reading. Although it is adults, not children, who will best appreciate the subject and satire here, the basic drama created by the characters' arguments may help this find an audience among kids, especially tech-savvy ones.--Medlar, Andrew Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Smith (Madam President) addresses e-literacy in his irreverent style, casting a donkey in the role of digital junkie and a gorilla as a literary type. The donkey fiddles with a laptop while the gorilla holds a novel. "What do you have there?" asks the techie, whose words are printed in ice blue, sans serif letters suggestive of a chat room. "It's a book," the ape answers, in a stately orange serif font. The donkey tests the gorilla's patience: "Can it text? Tweet? Wi-Fi?" (When he asks, "Where's your mouse?" a real one pops from beneath the gorilla's porkpie hat.) After the gorilla hands over Treasure Island, the donkey gripes, "Too many letters," and converts the scene to emoticons before getting hooked on the story. "I'll charge it up when I'm done!" he promises, at which the mouse squeaks, "It's a book, jackass." This smart-aleck retort, arguably justified because the donkey is a jackass in any sense of the word, urges readers to side with the scholarly gorilla. Meanwhile, Smith has the best of both worlds: his stylish drawings, sleek typography, and kid-friendly humor combine old media and new. Ages 6-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-5-Smith jump-starts the action on the title page where readers meet the characters-a mouse, a jackass, and a monkey. The monkey's oval head creates an "o" in the word "book." Slapstick humor ensues in an armchair face-off when one character, reared on a diet of Web 2.0 and gaming, cannot fathom what to do with a book and slings a barrage of annoying questions, "Can you blog with it? How do you scroll down? Can you make the characters fight?" Readers know who is speaking by each animal's unique font type and color, achieving economy and elegance on each page. Exasperated, Monkey hands over the volume. Life, death, and madness, all in a single illustrated page of Treasure Island, draw Jackass in. He responds with a knee-jerk reaction ("too many letters") and hilariously reduces it to text speak, but his interest is piqued. He covets the book and readers watch him pore over it for hours. Repeated images of him transfixed, shifting left to right, up and down, ears upright, then splayed, and eyes wide open, fill a wordless spread and offer a priceless visual testimony to the focused interaction between readers' imaginations and a narrative. Mouse delivers the final punch line, which will lead to a fit of naughty but well-deserved laughter, and shouts of "Encore." A clever choice for readers, young and old, who love a good joke and admire the picture book's ability to embody in 32 stills the action of the cinema.-Sara Lissa Paulson, American Sign Language and English Lower School PS 347, New York City (c) Copyright 2010. 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 Horn Book Review
This wickedly funny picture book has only three characters: a monkey, a mouse, and a donkey, the last of whom goes by a different name, and it's not hard to see why. Poor Monkey is trying to read, but a jackass with a laptop keeps interrupting him with puzzled questions about the object he's absorbed in: "What do you have there?" The conversation (the text is all dialogue) occurs in a sleek, minimalistic living room environment, where design elements such as varying fonts and computer-generated onomatopoeia add to the collision of techno and non-. By process of elimination Jackass determines what Monkey's object does not do: tweet, text, blog, scroll down, or require a password. Finally he rips it from fuming Monkey's stylized paws -- only to get completely caught up in the story. Kids will enjoy feeling superior to the donkey, who's still ignorant enough to call out, "Don't worry, I'll charge it up when I'm done!" And older ones will relish the naughty punch line -- Mouse pops out from under Monkey's hat to announce, "You don't have to [charge it up]...it's a book, Jackass" -- which, really, is just calling it like it is. christine m. heppermann (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Treasure Island passage reduced to AIM-speak will have middle schoolers and adults in stitches. Spongey-textured colors inhabit thick, sketchy outlines; composition is lively, facial expressions understatedly sharp. When the tech-savvy ass finally succumbs to the book's charms but still wants to "charge it up" like a computer, the mouse snarks, "You don't have to... / it's a book, Jackass." Despite Smith's sly title-page introduction of "jackass" as a legitimate animal label for donkey, this closing gibe refocuses and cheapens the humor into a gratuitous insult that yields no benefit beyond a feeling of superiority. (Picture book. 4-11)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
