Stuck

by Oliver Jeffers, Oliver Jeffers (Illustrator)

Overview

From the illustrator of the #1 smash The Day the Crayons Quit comes another bestseller—a giggle-inducing tale of everything tossed, thrown, and hurled in order to free a kite!

When Floyd's kite gets stuck in a tree, he's determined to get it out. But how? Well, by knocking it down with his shoe, of course. But strangely enough, it too gets stuck. And the only logical course of action . . . is to throw his other shoe. Only now it's stuck! Surely there must be something he can use to get his kite unstuck. An orangutan? A boat? His front door? Yes, yes, and yes. And that's only the beginning. Stuck is Oliver Jeffers' most absurdly funny story since The Incredible Book-Eating Boy. Childlike in concept and vibrantly illustrated as only Oliver Jeffers could, here is a picture book worth rescuing from any tree.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399257377
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	11/10/2011
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	9.26(w) x 12.48(h) x 0.44(d)
Lexile:	AD740L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

 Oliver Jeffers (www.oliverjeffersworld.com) makes art and tells stories. His books include How to Catch a Star; Lost and Found, which was the recipient of the prestigious Nestle Children’s Book Prize Gold Award in the U.K. and was later adapted into an award-winning animated film; The Way Back Home; The Incredible Book Eating Boy; The Great Paper Caper; The Heart and the Bottle, which was made into a highly acclaimed iPad application narrated by Helena Bonham Carter; Up and Down, the New York Times bestselling Stuck; The Hueys in the New Sweater, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year; and This Moose Belongs to Me, a New York Times bestseller. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, Oliver now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
 

Editorial Reviews

In an exuberantly absurd tale that recalls the old woman who swallowed a fly, a boy named Floyd goes to ridiculous lengths to remove his kite from a tree. Floyd tosses his sneakers, then his cat, into the leafy branches, and when they get stuck, too, he fetches a ladder. “He was going to sort this out once and for all... and up he threw it. I’m sure you can guess what happened.” Each spread pictures Floyd pitching another item into the tree and growing increasingly frustrated: a bike, a kitchen sink, the milkman, a fire truck, and “a curious whale, in the wrong place at the wrong time... and they all got stuck.” Jeffers (The Incredible Book Eating Boy) pictures the extravagant accumulation in abstract pencil-and-gouache doodles, with hand-lettered text to set a conversational tone. The tall, narrow format reinforces the tree’s height in comparison to small, stick-figure Floyd. Jeffers’s droll resolution—the kite comes down, although afterward Floyd “could have sworn there was something he was forgetting”—is testament to the boy’s single-mindedness and the chaos he leaves in his wake. Ages 3–5. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

* "Jeffers’ light-handed illustrations are hilariously droll . . . The giggle-inducing conclusion leaves some stuff, um, up in the air."—A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2011, starred review — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

* "Yields a childlike aesthetic sure to tickle the funny bones of its target audience–and of the adults who share the story with youngsters."—School Library Journal, starred review — School Library Journal (starred review)

"With deceptive simplicity and sophisticated illustration, this comic look at problem solving will have wide appeal."—Booklist — Booklist

From the Publisher

"With deceptive simplicity and sophisticated illustration, this comic look at problem solving will have wide appeal."--Booklist

Booklist

PreS-Gr 2—Floyd has a problem: his kite is stuck in a tree. Employing kid logic, he throws his favorite shoe to dislodge the wayward object—to no avail. The imaginative hero fetches a host of other items: a friend's bicycle, the kitchen sink, a long-distance lorry, the house across the street, a curious whale ("in the wrong place at the wrong time"). Alas, each item joins its predecessors, lodged in the foliage. Jeffers's deadpan descriptions and the ludicrous scale of Floyd's selections are laugh-out-loud hilarious. As the child carries the house on his head, his neighbor leans out the window, commenting, simply: "Floyd?" Then there is the incongruity between expectation and reality. When he retrieves a ladder, firemen, and finally a saw, readers will surely expect climbing or cutting, but no. Everything gets pitched up, including the light bulb that hovers over the child's head, just before he achieves success. The tree, which continually changes color (and therefore, mood), is a dense, scribbled, layered specimen, perfect for harboring the odd assemblage. The text appears to be hand-lettered, as if written by a youngster. In concert with the quirky, mixed-media caricatures, supported by stick legs, it yields a childlike aesthetic sure to tickle the funny bones of its target audience—and of the adults who share the story with youngsters.—Wendy Lukehart, Washington DC Public Library

School Library Journal

Everything but the kitchen sink gets tossed up a tree to help Floyd retrieve his kite--oops, there goes the kitchen sink too! Floyd has one approach, and one approach only, to kite recovery: Throw something up to knock the kite down. He flings up a bucket of paint, the milkman, real trucks, a full-size lighthouse and "a curious whale, in the wrong place at the wrong time." Everything sticks. Jeffers' light-handed illustrations are hilariously droll. Some pages symbolize mood with a single color, boy and tree both murky brown with irritation or red with frustration. The text is handwritten in a childish yet legible scrawl, with liberal use of uppercase letters. The comically deadpan narration never overtells, moving straight from "Floyd fetched Mitch" (a cat) to "Cats get stuck in trees all the time, but this was getting ridiculous." Sometimes Floyd verges on solutions, but he always lapses into the familiar pattern: "Floyd fetched a ladder. He was going to sort this out once and for all… / … and up he threw it. / I'm sure you can guess what happened." Finally, Floyd fetches a saw, holds the blade carefully against the tree trunk--"and hurled it up the tree." The giggle-inducing conclusion leaves some stuff, um, up in the air. Floyd's stubbornness and the smorgasbord-filled tree remain funny through repeated readings, offering kids the special glee of knowing more than the protagonist. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews