  | Full Text Reviews: Bulletin for the Center... - 09/01/2016 The story here starts with the author’s arm-wrestling of a tiger, an event that, he knows, needs to become a book, but Barnett then uses the creation of that story to turn a lens on the process of literary creation itself: “The first draft of this book was not so good. Neither was the second draft. Or the third. Or the twelfth.” There’s some comic but ultimately authentic detail about working with an editor (“I took some of her advice. And I ignored some of her advice”), getting the book printed, and getting those printed books shipped. At that point things turn into a more freewheeling story about the fantastical digressive journey this particular volume undertook, ending on the reader-response note that it was really when “you read this book through to the very last page” that this book was made. While the story gets a little rambly at times, it’s friendly and vigorous, depicting writing as a communicative process rather than one of silent inspiration, and the emphasis on the necessity of imperfect work is laudable and valuable. Rex’s mixed-media art is robust and genial, with bold pencil strokes, lively collage layering, and lots of map and globe images for the communication and shipping scenes. The layout is enjoyably hectic, with text in informal font appearing aslant within bubbles and hills in contrasting digital color, adding to the humorous tumult. Kids who’d snore their way through a factual account will embrace this sustained dad joke about authorship. DS - Copyright 2016 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Booklist - 08/01/2016 Tiger endpapers are the tease to “explain” how author Barnett got his idea for this book (while arm wrestling with a tiger on a tower in California!). After many rewrites and “fixes,” his editor in New York declares it time for the illustrator in Arizona to make the pictures. Numerous dotted red lines cover a map of America, showing how the manuscript goes back and forth before completion. Another dotted line curves around the globe to Malaysia, where the book is printed. The high pile of printed copies is visible to astronauts eating ice cream in space! Rex’s illustrations of wide-eyed people and animals culminate in a ragtag crowd, including the now white-bearded author, waiting to read the book. The wildly comic artwork is made with black Prismacolor pencil on colored paper, acrylic paint on a globe, photography, and Photoshop. In this companion to Chloe and the Lion (2012), the popular duo has made another piece of clever metafiction (or, in this case, part meta-nonfiction) on how bookmaking works. - Copyright 2016 Booklist. Loading...
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