That is not a good idea!

Mo Willems

Book - 2013

A surprising lesson about the importance of listening to one's inner gosling ensues when a very hungry fox issues a dinner invitation to a very plump goose.

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Subjects
Genres
Picture books
Published
New York : Balzer + Bray c2013.
Language
English
Main Author
Mo Willems (-)
Edition
1st ed
Item Description
At head of title: Mo Willems presents.
Physical Description
1 v. (unpaged) : col. ill. ; 25 cm
ISBN
9780062203090
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

ANYONE who knows children knows they are not timid when it comes to pondering ethical conundrums. Rather, as their routine cry of "No fair!" proves, they live for it. "Brief Thief," by Michaël Escoffier, could serve as the basis for a nursery school moot court. Here are the facts of the case: Leon, a green lizard (some species of chameleon, it appears, though this is unstated), has to "go poo." Unfortunately, he is out of toilet paper. Looking for an alternative - "Leaves? No, they're too prickly. Grass? No, that will be too messy" - Leon spots an old pair of underpants hanging on a tree branch. He pauses momentarily to consider this question of fair use. The briefs, with a red and pink pattern, "might belong to someone," he concedes, but then wonders why someone would leave them in a tree. "And anyway," he concludes, "they're full of holes." In short order, Leon uses the underpants to clean himself, then tosses them into the bushes. This is where things get interesting. I would argue that under the laws of the forest or the jungle or wherever it is Leon lives, he is well within his rights to assume the underwear has been abandoned. Leon, however, is made of squishier stuff. Someone starts speaking to him - his conscience or, as it introduces itself, "the little voice you hear inside your head whenever you get up to something naughty." Leon insists he has a clean bill of moral health but eventually confesses the underwear business. His conscience pounces: "Aha! Now we're getting somewhere! Since when are we allowed to touch other people's things? What do they teach you in school, anyway?" If I were Leon I'd answer, "They teach sharing." But "Brief Thief" has been translated from French (it was published under the more ambiguous and very French-seeming title "Ni Vu Ni Connu" - "Neither Seen Nor Known"), and perhaps France's preschool curriculum is more Randian than our own. At any rate, Leon's conscience orders him to wash the briefs, leave them to dry and "GET LOST!" Leon does this, but Escoffier's story, like a good legal thriller, offers a final twist: Leon's conscience isn't what it appears to be, and in a mostly wordless coda, the book reveals who actually owns the underpants and exactly why they are ridden with holes. The answer made both me and a 5 ½-year-old I borrowed to read the book with (it was her half-birthday) laugh out loud. Truly funny sight gags are a picture-book holy grail, or should be, and Kris Di Giacomo's cartoonish yet painterly illustrations are witty in a way children and adults alike will savor. (Parents who frown on bottom-related humor should be aware that "Brief Thief" could well serve as a gateway drug to "Captain Underpants.") Three other new books delve into equally thorny questions of right and wrong, though with perhaps less Dostoyevskian gusto. "That Is Not a Good Idea!," by the great and prolific Mo Willems - the author and illustrator of the Knuffle Bunny and Pigeon books, among many others - takes the form of a silent movie, complete with title cards. The players: Hungry Fox, Plump Goose and Baby Geese. On-screen, Fox tries to maneuver Goose toward a very large soup pot, while in the audience a flock of hatchlings react to events with a continuing chorus of "That is Not a good idea!" and "That is Really not a good idea!" and so on, which I found Really fun to read aloud. (And I mean loud.) Yet again, there is a nice twist - more Sweeney Todd than D.W. Griffith, but nothing a Grimms-tested child can't handle. I would hope "That Is Not a Good Idea!" might lead to a discussion not just of culinary ethics but also of silent film comedy and, perhaps, for dessert, a Buster Keaton DVD. I was less enamored of "The Highway Rat," by the frequent collaborators Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler ("The Gruffalo," "Room on the Broom"). The titular antihero is an old-school, sword-wielding highway robber, like something out of an all-rodent "Barry Lyndon." Donaldson's rhymes are pleasing to read aloud, but the rat himself turns out to be a rather one-note character and is also, well, a rat. (Please excuse my bias. I was exposed to "Ben" at an early age.) On the other hand, I was glad that for once, a bad guy turns out to be genuinely bad and not merely sad or misunderstood (see: the Grinch and every bully on a Disney Channel). Speaking of misunderstanding, a crucial plot point involving a cave and an echo was too subtly delineated for my borrowed 5 ½-year-old - although the fault may lie with her urban upbringing and an attendant ignorance of cavern acoustics. THE villain of "The Dark" is more abstract: the title character itself is the nightly bane of many children, including this book's young hero, Laszlo. Daniel Handler, writing as Lemony Snicket, does a wonderful job of . . . I was going to write "personifying the dark," but "thingifying" is more like it: "The dark lived in the same house as Laszlo. . . . Sometimes the dark hid in the closet. Sometimes it sat behind the shower curtain. But mostly it spent its time in the basement. All day long the dark would wait in a distant corner. . . . At night, of course, the dark went out and spread itself against the windows and doors of Laszlo's house." The illustrations by Jon Klassen, who just won the 2013 Caldecott Medal for "This Is Not My Hat," are fully up to Handler's lovely-spooky conception, poetic and concrete in equal measure. Their story is set in motion one evening when the bulb in Laszlo's night light goes out; the climax will most likely be the first time young readers are exposed to the old "Uh oh, don't go down the basement steps" horror-movie trope. But as the Gods of Narrative demand, descend Laszlo must. Fortunately, there are no shrieks, no blood, not even a cat leaping gratuitously from a shadow - just a gentle, happy ending as Laszlo and the dark reach a détente. Correction: In the second paragraph, the author should not have made a joke about nursery school moot courts. Any preschool administrator now thinking of instituting a moot court to please parents with visions of Harvard Law School in their eyes should forget anything was ever said. Bruce Handy is a deputy editor at Vanity Fair.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 14, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review

If anyone is going to pull off a picture book built on the conventions of old-time silent movies exaggerated facial expressions, telling body language, and, of course, blacked-out dialogue pages cut into the story it would be Willems. The setup is classic dastardly villain and innocent naif, as a three-piece-suited, top-hatted, grinning fox catches the eye of a sweet, old babushka-wearing duck. Dinner! He asks if she'd like to go for a stroll in the deep, dark forest to his kitchen, where he's making a pot of soup that's missing only one last ingredient. At each step of the way, an increasingly frantic litter of chicks warns That is really, really, really, really not a good idea! By the time the story reaches its peak, you can practically hear the Wurlitzer throbbing, and kids will be squirming with tense glee, primed for a classic Willems gotcha that turns the whole thing on its head for the poor, unsuspecting fox. A quick, crowd-pleasing lark that should be a hit at group storytime. High-Demand Backstory: Willems, Willems Willems! And as much as everyone loves Elephant and Piggie, fans will be pleased to have a new offering in a picture-book format.--Chipman, Ian Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Willems, whose Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs also operated on a balance of threat and humor, models this suspenseful picture book after a silent movie. The sequence concerns a dastardly villain, played by a smirking fox in a top hat, and an ingenue, played by a coy duck in a blue headscarf. The fox invites the sweet-looking duck "for a stroll." When she agrees, he asks, "Would you care to continue our walk into the deep, dark woods?" "Sounds fun!" she answers. Each time the duck accepts the fox's invitations, an increasingly alarmed audience of six yellow peeps pops up to shout some version of the title: "That is not a good idea!" This being a Willems vehicle, a sudden twist reveals which character the peeps have been addressing all along. Cinematic conventions, like neatly framed white-on-black intertitles and gauzy iris-eye close-ups of the eyelash-batting heroine, join allusions to classics like "Henny Penny," Rosie's Walk, and perhaps even Mighty Mouse. Trust Willems to blend silents, animation, and comics for a wickedly droll poultry-in-peril yarn. Ages 4-8. Agent: Marcia Wernick, Wernick & Pratt. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review

PreS-Gr 3-It's not often that a video translation of a picture book actually surpasses the excellence of the source material, but that is the case with this offering from Mo Willems. The depiction of the narrative as if it is an old movie is more apparent, beginning with a baby goose comically struggling to pull down a movie screen. The scratches, black-and-white countdown, and title cards that characterize a silent film follow. It's not until a narrator introduces our stars that the palette turns to color, highlighting the nefarious Hungry Fox and the hapless Plump Goose. Ragtime piano accompanies the action as the two set out on their stroll in the forest, though a gosling warns Goose that the stroll is not a good idea. This version adds an intricately rendered village background with a bridge and additional wide-eyed characters. Fox's menacing nature is enhanced by his evil laugh and leer. The naïveté of big-eyed Goose is conveyed by her exaggeratedly voiced eagerness to accompany the Fox and by her flirtatious laughter. When the players have moved to Wolf's kitchen, he struggles with his pot of water for soup as the warnings of the chicks become more emphatic and their antics more amusing. Postdenouement, as the credits roll, Plump Goose shuts off the projector as her babies line up with spoons to enjoy their soup, now containing a missing ingredient. A supplemental short film by Trixie Willems, the author's daughter, introduces the many people on "Team Mo" who worked together to create this excellent film. VERDICT Visual and audio elements combine perfectly to enhance this deliciously silly story that has a satisfying twist, sure to entertain the most sated audience.-Constance Dickerson, Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library, OH © Copyright 2016. 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

"What's for dinner?" is the nightly question heard around the world. But if one is a member of the hunting set, the answer involves more than ordering a pizza. When Mr. Fox spies an innocent goose, it appears his problem is solved. All charm, he asks her to go for a walk, visit his kitchen, and critique his soup. These scenes play out like a silent movie, with all conversation between the two shown in title frames (white text against black background) on one page and action in full-bleed illustrations on the facing one. Five times the smarmy fox cajoles; five times the coy goose responds. Interspersed between each sequence is a double-page Greek chorus of frenetic goslings warning, "That is NOT a good idea!" As the fox lures the goose into his lair and closer and closer to his cook pot, Willems increases the goslings' hysteria, at each step adding one more to the chorus and another "really" until by story's climax the chorus is shouting: "That is REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY NOT a good idea!" The (distinctly unexpected) denouement comes with a flourish, here a fowl line imitating the Rockettes, gosling-style. There's a trifecta of reading possibilities here: an energetic storytime, a read-alone, and a raucous readers' theater. betty carter (c) Copyright 2013. 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

A new offering of guaranteed laughs from three-time Caldecott-honoree Willems. From the cover to the cast credits to the title page, the story presents itself as a movie in book form, observed not only by readers, but by a gaggle of excitable goslings. The action begins when a dapper fox and a plump goose meetsuccessfully establishing the field of a traditional tale. Dialogue between the characters, showcased as ornately framed white text against a page-filling black background, harkens back to the design of silent films. Double-page spreads picture an increasing number of goslings gazing out at readers and admonishing, "That is NOT a good idea!" as the wide-eyed goose follows the fox from the city to his home in the woods. The goslings' antics grow progressively franticand hilariousas their warnings increase in intensity. The climax proves that appearances can be deceiving, as the anticipated conclusion is turned on its head. Using signature bold lines, Willems' illustrations are as satisfyingly expressive and comic as his previous work featuring fowl (his pigeon makes a cameo appearance here, though not an obvious one). Exceptionally observant readers may anticipate the twist, but that won't spoil the enjoyment of this fun-loving fractured fable. Minimal text makes this book ideal for read-alouds and discussions of fable and fairy-tale motifs. Pure glee. (Picture book. 3-8)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.