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Booktopia Comments
A very clever book and perfect for children who are already very tech savvy and you are desperate for them to read a book. Although minimal in words it is very "With it" when it comes to all the computer and internet buzz words. Perfect for a child who is still young and not transitioning in to books and you are looking for a fun way to try something new... well, old!
Book Description
No matter how many electronic devices are available these days, you can't deny the simple appeal of a good book. Monkey is reading a book, but his friend wants to know what the book can do. Does it have a mouse like his computer? Can you make the characters fight? And does it make loud noises? No, it's a book. Monkey's friend discovers that a good book doesn't need fancy electronic accessories.
About The Author
Lane Smith is an award-winning children's author and illustrator. His recent American publications Madam President and John, Paul, George & Ben both were New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestsellers. His titles with Jon Scieszka include, the Caldecott Honor winner, The Stinky Cheese Man, The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs and Science Verse. In 1996 Lane served as Conceptual Designer on the Disney film version of James and the Giant Peach. Lane live in Connecticut with his wife, who has designed all of Lane's titles.
Publishers Weekly
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.)
The Wall Street Journal
Stylishly designed.
USA Today's "Pop Candy" blog
This tongue-in-cheek picture book about reading in the digital age features the best last line ever written in the history of children's literature. Savor it in print rather than trying to read it on your Nook, Kindle or iPad —the punchline will be much better that way.
Booklist
Smith throws down his gauntlet in the ongoing debate over digital versus print.
The New Yorker
I do love this book.
Other Reviews
"I do love this book." --"The New Yorker "magazine's, Book Bench blog
"Those of us for whom books are a faith in themselves -- who find the notion that pixels, however ordered, could be any kind of substitute for the experience of reading in a chair with the strange thing spread open on our lap -- will love this book. Though it will surely draw a laugh from kids, it will give even more pleasure to parents who have been trying to make loudly the point that Smith's book makes softly: that the virtues of a book are independent of any bells, whistles or animation it might be made to contain. . . . For in trying to make the case for books to our kids, exactly the case we want to make is not that they can compete with the virtues of computer or screens, but that they do something else: that they allow for a soulfulness the screens, with their jumpy impersonality, cannot duplicate . . . The moral of Smith's book is the right one: not that screens are bad and books are good, but that what books do depends on the totality of what they are -- their turning pages, their sturdy self-sufficiency, above all the way they invite a child to withdraw from this world into a world alongside ours in an activity at once mentally strenuous and physically still." --Adam Gopnick, in "The New York Times Book Review"
"This tongue-in-cheek picture book about reading in the digital age features the best last line ever written in the history of children's literature. Savor it in print rather than trying to read it on your Nook, Kindle or iPad --the punchline will be much better that way." --"USA"" Today's""""Pop Candy" blog
"Stylishly designed." -- "The Wall Street Journal," in its Summer Big Books Preview
"In the age of e-readers, Smith offers a wry tribute to the printed word through a conversation about a book. As a gorilla sits reading quietly, a technophilic donkey pesters him about the source of his absorption: "Can it text? Tweet? Wi-Fi?" He may be a complete ass, but the donke
ISBN: 9781596436060
ISBN-10: 1596436069
Audience:
Children
For Ages: 6 - 10 years old
For Grades: 1 - 5
Format:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 32
Published: 10th August 2010
Dimensions (cm): 25.4 x 21.082
x 0.762
Weight (kg): 0.327
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