Bound To Stay Bound

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Bulletin for the Center... - 11/01/2012 This intriguing title offers a series of brief skit-like sequences that tell a visual joke or play on words in a spreadful of panel illustrations; for instance, “The Pizza” features a pizza chef who carefully cuts and eats a slice of pizza, whereupon the now Pac-Man-shaped pie gobbles up the pizza chef. Each of the six sections follows a particular protagonist or set of protagonists (“The Dairy Farmer,” “The Clown”), and each section offers five titled mini-stories. As with any revue-styled collection, the entries vary in success, with some falling flat, but there are plenty of humorously punchy sketches. The style of comedy ranges from the witty (the chef who fishes the letters “f l y” out of the customer’s alphabet soup-because there’s a fly in his soup, geddit?) to the surreal (the woodsman brings what looks like a log to the base of the tree, but it turns out to be the tree’s shadow, which he then unrolls and sits in) to the enjoyably corny (the “Three-Ring Circus” features a clown who answers the phone after three rings). The limited text-many sequences are entirely wordless, and there’s never text beyond speech balloons and story titles-makes this appealing for reluctant readers, and there’s overall a sophisticated air of cunning playfulness that evokes cartoonists such as Gahan Wilson and Gary Larson. The line and watercolor illustrations are crafted with exactitude; hatching textures some elements while rhythmic pigmented dappling brings order to others. That controlled style and the tidy domesticity of the scenes enhances the contrasting weirdness of the events. Use this to draw the artists into language arts and to give the word-weary a break. DS - Copyright 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

School Library Journal - 01/01/2013 Gr 2 Up—A series of recurring characters acts out a variety of gag scenarios in mostly silent, multipanel setups with a well-constructed, elementary twist in the final image. O'Brien provides a series of jokes that operate on multiple levels, most of which exhibit a visual pun at their heart as well as a secondary joke. The stippled texture of the watercolor backgrounds gives the stylized cartoons an interesting mosaic feel that seems slightly archaic. This, combined with the stock characters-a clown, a knight, a woodcutter, a farmer-and the formal setup/twist structure of the gags can make the entire work feel curiously medieval, as if the jokes could be Chaucerian in origin, the odd appearance of a telephone or an elevator notwithstanding. This doesn't make them inaccessible to a younger audience, who tend to enjoy wordplay and simple absurdities, but it does make the book unlikely to create passionate devotees who will call friends over to share in the joke. The concept of the title, that things are not always what they appear, will provide some whimsical enjoyment, but probably won't live up to its secondary aspect: that readers might revisit and reread the content a second or third time.—Benjamin Russell, Belmont High School, NH - Copyright 2013 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

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