The Day We Lost Pet

by Chuck Young, Aniela Sobieski (Illustrator)

Overview

Part creation myth, part fairy tale, The Day We Lost Pet tells the story of a family that comes together to mourn the death of their beloved Pet. These endearing balloon characters harness the language of poetry, science, and nature in order to understand one of life’s most difficult moments.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780998799933
Publisher:	Penny Candy Books
Publication date:	01/30/2018
Pages:	48
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	5 - 10 Years

About the Author

Chuck Young lives and dads in his hometown of Clinton, Massachusetts. He was in a touring emo band in the early 2000s and, more recently, managing editor of theEEEL by tNY.Press (a channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books). He has published short fiction and poetry in various journals online and in print. This is his first book.

Aniela Sobieski is an artist from Minnesota. She earned a BFA in painting from the University of Wisconsin--Madison and an MFA from Syracuse University. Her artwork has been exhibited and collected both nationally and internationally. The Day We Lost Pet is her debut as a children's book illustrator. She lives with her husband and two-year-old daughter in St. Paul.

Editorial Reviews

★ 2017-10-30
From the opening pages, with lines like "we were piles of skin laundry blending into a world of pales and fogs," debut author Young transports readers into a world somehow familiar and simultaneously unlike any they have ever experienced.Two balloon people inhale and exhale each other's essences, become bonded, and create Baby. Baby's love brings Pet into the family, an animal made from a different kind of balloon. Tragically, Pet is deflating rapidly. Baby's parents search desperately for a cure. In this futile process, they are pulled away from each other and from Baby until Baby's heartbreak brings everyone back together. The language of this story is utterly surreal, but its feelings are recognizable and palpable—bright love, devastating grief, and fragile hope. Debut illustrator Sobieski renders the dreamscape visible with equally poetic illustrations. Splashy watercolors and the ample use of purple and dark green create an otherworldly environment in which the characters experience completely identifiable emotions. Gender isn't central to the story, but it's worth noting that Young deliberately avoids gender binaries by writing in the first person and using the third person "they" to refer to the narrator's partner. This supremely tender book is one that readers will return to again and again, if they can bear it, finding new meaning with each reading and in each new stage of life.Breathtakingly original. (Picture book. 4-11)

Kirkus Reviews