Review by Booklist Review
The creative team behind The Savage (2008) pair up again for another work chiseled out of the raw material of hard, deep feelings of loss. Two Australian boys, Slog and the narrator, Davie, are on their way to pick up a couple of sandwiches when Slog spots a man sitting on a bench. Davie recounts the painful fashion in which Slog's dad died after losing both of his legs and how he promised his son that when he gets his legs back in heaven, I'll walk straight out of them pearly gates . . . right back here to the lovely earth. Slog is convinced this man is his father come back, but Davie doesn't brook such illusions. Almond's understated, magic-realism-tinged story trades licks with McKean's distinctive artwork, a few pages of prose followed by a few pages of multiformat imagery that doesn't so much illustrate the proceedings as reflect and explore the depths of grief, longing, and hope swirling about a boy's last chance to say good-bye to his father. With understated and uncommon wisdom, Almond and McKean wring a bit of hope out of the toughest of emotions.--Chipman, Ian Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Another haunting and beautiful book from the U.K. team that produced The Savage in 2008. Almond, winner of the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen Author Award, has written a pitch-perfect story about a boy who believes that his father has returned to visit him, as he promised he would do before his death. The volume is richly and poetically illustrated by McKean (The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish), who offers gorgeous sequences that intercut with the text, showing a boy assembling a paper man, removing the balloon head from a scarecrow, and reading a superhero comic. These visual excursions illustrate events that are not narrated in the text but that add fullness and dimension to the character, drawing out the grieving boy's emotional state by showing us the melancholy, hopeful fantasy world he inhabits. Through narration from a skeptical friend, Davie, the reader is allowed to question Slog's experience while believing in it, too. The concise story opens a window onto the boy's enormous loss by narrating a single, puzzling event. McKean's images are edgy and startling, helping to create a stunning match of them with the words. Ages 7-up. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-The spring after Davie's friend Slog loses his father, the two boys encounter a man on a bench whom Slog believes to be his dad, returned from heaven. The narrative then recounts the man's illness, which included multiple amputations, and his death. Originally written as a short prose piece, Almond's story has been not so much illustrated, but framed and given visual sequences that amplify and reinforce the boy's grief. McKean combines paint, photography, and some digital manipulation to create some very tonal and evocative extensions. This technique is effective, but it also makes the collaboration more emotionally abstract than a simple story. But complexity and abstraction can also engender ambiguity, and it's difficult to say for certain how readers are supposed to feel about the doubts Davie expresses about Slog's dad's veracity, or the way that Almond mixes the mundane and the supernatural. The Savage (Candlewick, 2008), the pair's earlier collaboration, was a fairly clear-cut tale of magical realism, identity, and wish-fulfillment, but the focus on mourning here makes the resolution more difficult to pin down. There's an honesty to it, just as there is a raw, emotive honesty to McKean's illustrations, even if it's sometimes delayed until the context for them comes like a punch in Almond's next text section. This is a strangely incomplete, but fascinating work that may leave readers uncomfortable with the sudden ending. But for those who have dealt with the lack of closure that intertwines with loss, this will be a particularly resonant book.-Benjamin Russell, Belmont High School, NH (c) Copyright 2011. 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
When Slog points out his father on a park bench, Davie is skeptical: Slog's dad has been dead for months. In the end, what Davie thinks is true isn't as important as what Slog needs to believe. Interspersed with moody pictorial segments, Almond's elegiac short story, in thick British dialect, sensitively explores grief, acceptance, and closure. (c) Copyright 2011. 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.
