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Summary
Summary
Young worriers will relate to -- and be comforted by -- this tale of a boy's anxiety as he heads to his first big party.
What if Joe doesn't like the party he's going to? What if he doesn't like the food or the games or the people? As Joe and his mom walk down the darkening street, Joe's imagination starts to run wild. And as they search for the right place, he wonders "what if . . ." at each house, peeking in to see some surprising sights. From the award-winning former British Children's Laureate Anthony Browne comes a picture book whose slyly bewitching setup unfolds to a reassuring ending.
Author Notes
Anthony Browne is a recent British Children's Laureate and has received many awards for his work, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award for his services to children's literature. He has written and illustrated more than forty books, including Little Beauty, One Gorilla, and How Do You Feel? Anthony Browne lives in Kent, England.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A nervous boy named Joe is on his way to a birthday party, but he has lost his invitation and doesn't know the house number. Panels in blue wash show Joe's mother reassuring him as they walk down the street, considering each house. "What if there's someone at the party I don't know?" Joe asks. "You'll be fine," she says. The magic is in the dreamlike scenes that appear in each successive house's window-are they real, or Joe's anxieties made manifest? The first reveals an elderly couple sitting, somnolent, in their front room; a closer look suggests they might be aliens. An enormous elephant looms in the next window. Further along, schoolboys reminiscent of Tweedledee and Tweedledum shove a companion into a teapot. "What if they play scary games?" Joe asks. A roomful of Brueghel characters heaves and churns. Yet the love between Joe and his mother always keeps his fears from overtaking him, and when Joe finds the party at last, it's his mother who has a moment of anxiety. Beautifully and subtly executed, with Brown's extraordinary illustrative powers at work throughout. Ages 5-8. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Joe is a little worrywart to start with, so it doesn't help matters that he's lost the invitation--with the address--to his friend Tom's birthday party. His mom assures him that since they know what block Tom lives on, they'll be able to find the right house. They walk down the street, and each picture window they pass shows a silhouette of something seemingly ordinary inside the house. A page turn, however, brings into focus the strange, surreal, sometimes nightmarish scenes that are actually taking place (including an homage to Bruegel's Children's Games). Many of Joe's "what if" questions are humorously echoed in what they see. For example, just as he worries "What if I don't like the food?," the pair passes a house containing four Tweedledee and Tweedledum-like schoolboys sitting around a table laden with worms, eyeballs, snails, and a smiling soft-boiled egg. The discussion between levelheaded mother and socially anxious son continues in dialogue that moves seamlessly between speech balloons (Joe: "When will you come get me?" Mom: "In a couple of hours or so") and main text ("'Can't you come earlier?' asked Joe. 'What if it's awful?'"). When Joe and his mom finally get to the last house on the block--the house that must be Tom's--the strange silhouettes reveal themselves to be...a very cheery party with children Joe already knows. With its sophisticated visual humor, this is Browne at his artistically weird and psychologically complex best. kathleen t. horning (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
A window filled with swimming sharks. A room swarming with snakes and people dressed like Hieronymus Bosch's peasants. A batlike shadow spanning the front of a darkened house. These are just some of the bizarre images that confront a small boy and his mother as they make their way to a birthday party about which the boy is anxious. The mother and son's quest to find the house makes physical the childhood fear of the unknown what goes on in other people's houses, and is it like what goes on in the child's own? Like some of the work of Maurice Sendak, former British Children's Laureate Browne is unafraid to present sinister images, and some young readers might be disturbed. The fact that the boy ends up having a great time at the party won't erase the unsettling images from the minds of readers, but it may also offer assurance that some dark paths do end in light. This could also work as a wonderful introduction for older children to both graphic novels and surrealist painters.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2014 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
"SOMEONE GOES ON A JOURNEY" ÍS One of the guiding precepts of narrative; "Are we there yet?" is one of the guiding precepts of childhood. Picture books must inhabit the middle of this Venn diagram, offering stories as scenic and driving as any novel, at a pace more novel than driving through scenery. Four new package deals have come across my desk; let's see what we can book. Anthony Browne, over the course of a long and impressive career, has embarked on voyages ranging from the Joycean interiors of "Voices in the Park" to his adaptation of "King Kong," which is the sort of book you need to keep in a separate room from the one in which you're sleeping. His new picture book, "What If ... ?," is an anxious effort, too. Young Joe worries on his way to a birthday party, and as he shares his fears with his mother - "It's nice to meet new people"; "Not if they're HORRIBLE!" - they peek through the windows of all the homes on the block, revealing various unnerving tableaus in Browne's trademark sharp detail, some in homage to such party killers as Bruegel and Tenniel. The party turns out O.K., but the touch of shadow one always finds in Browne's work - not to mention the book's discomfiting title - tells us that this is nothing but luck. The endpapers display a vast array of stars - a world of possibility where the chances of a lovely time, particularly in the British suburbs, are no greater than those of being attacked by wild beasts. The young heroes of Aaron Becker's "Quest" don't seem nervous at all - admirable, or perhaps foolhardy, given the scope of their adventure. "Quest" is the sequel to Becker's Caldecott Honor book, "Journey," another wordless picture book with an enormous following. One hates to rain on parades. "Journey" begins with a bored girl drawing a door with a glowing red pen - or perhaps a wand - that then opens and leads her to a world of wonder. By the start of "Quest" she has been joined by a friend with another enchanted, um, crayon. I'm not the first critic to comment on Becker's debt to "Harold and the Purple Crayon," but while Crockett Johnson invested his device with a deadpan anarchy - first Harold draws too many pies, then a moose and porcupine to finish them - the crayons of "Quest" provide quick-fix solutions. Locked doors? The children draw keys. Need to swim? Scuba gear. Similarly, the vast landscapes, though ably detailed in vibrant watercolors, are just what you would think of when you think of things like this. The king has a long white beard, the underwater city looks like every Atlantis; it would be nice if Becker and his heroes were dreaming up something beyond basic genre. There's nothing wrong with a familiar adventure, but here's hoping that the third book in the Journey trilogy - even money it's titled "Voyage" - takes us into more startling territory. The territory is startling from the moment you open "Pomelo's Big Adventure," the fourth book in the Pomelo the Garden Elephant series - the endpapers show a landscape of striped rocks and other not-quite-discernible items from the world of Ramona Badescu (loopy words) and Benjamin Chaud (loopier pictures). Pomelo the elephant decides to set out on an adventure "now that his dandelion is bare." If we understand these books as ways to help children get a grip on the world, this sort of off-kilter beginning has precisely the bewildering texture of real life, in which a picture book reader might find herself strapped into a plastic seat right after breakfast, the better to be punctual for circle time. Philip C. Stead, most famous for writing the deserved classic "A Sick Day for Amos McGee," starts his new book, "Sebastian and the Balloon," in the same slanted way: "Sebastian sat high on his roof - something he was never supposed to do. 'There is nothing to see on my street,' he thought. ... 'Tonight I'll leave and see something new for a change.'" On a roof, near a bare dandelion : We're already someplace interesting before we leave, and both books tug us into dynamic worlds as harum-scarum as they are utterly believable. Pomelo and Sebastian do their packing - the elephant takes, among other things, "his toothbrush, his knife-fork, his pillow, an old photograph, some ribbon, pumpkin seeds, a world map" and other items that we do and do not spot in the brilliantly scattered illustration, while Sebastian gathers "all the things he would ever need," letting us catalog his holdings ourselves. In both books, some of the items come in handy and some never appear again; to summarize either journey is to insult the dashing and daring these wonderful stories accomplish. As with Sendak or Murakami, one has the sense that literally anything can happen, without the work feeling reckless or ungrounded; also like Sendak and Murakami, the two books really have hardly anything in common. "Pomelo's Big Adventure" feels like a story one improvises for a child, adding more details and twists as the mood strikes. "Sebastian and the Balloon," on the other hand, feels like a story one hears from a child, intriguingly full of missing information. Pomelo gets conned by an unnamed animal - Chaud makes him look like a rat - and ends up with a friend; Sebastian gathers friends as he goes, and ends up somewhere the thoughtfully minimal text, and Stead's multitextured illustrations, cannot describe. "They rode... and rode," the book concludes, Sebastian and the others having reached (and repaired) a roller coaster, "until the wind picked up and it was time to go," this last page giving us nothing but a grainy blue sky and a single bird - it's a goose-pimply moment. Pomelo, on the other hand, can be found everywhere - an early spread describes his route as "prickly, uphill, sticky, boring, surprising, lively and ... lost in the distance." But far from lost, there are 11 Pomelos across Chaud's every-which-way depiction, easily one of my favorite illustrations of the year. "Pomelo's Big Adventure" and "Sebastian and the Balloon" show that every step of the way, from packing to snacking, is part and parcel of an exciting journey; like all terrific books, they're reasons enough to travel. DANIEL HANDLER'S latest book as Lemony Snicket, "Shouldn't You Be in School?," has just been published.
School Library Journal Review
Starred Review. PreS-Gr 2-Young Joe is apprehensive about attending his friend Tom's evening birthday party. He lost the invitation, remembers the street name, but forgot the house number. His mother assures him they'll find Tom's home if they just walk along the street and look in windows. As he and his mother search, Joe peppers her with questions that reveal his anxiety: "What if I don't like the food?" and "What if there's someone at the party I don't know?" His mother patiently attempts to assuage his uneasiness. Joe's fears feed his imagination, causing him to see disquieting visions in the houses they pass, including possible aliens, a huge elephant, and slithering snakes. Once they find the right place and Joe joins the party, it's his mother who begins to have doubts about leaving him. The intriguing gouache and crayon illustrations are enjoyable to study as Browne subtly inserts strange images, including a rabbit on a roof and the shadow of a menacing bear. The common fear of dealing with a new situation is handled well, and Browne's treatment of the topic will have readers nodding with understanding.- Maryann H. Owen, Children's Literature Specialist, Mt. Pleasant, WI (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Joe worries the whole way to his first party, clutching the gift to his chest, furrowing his brow, and asking his mother, again and again, What if?Theyve lost the invitation with Toms address, setting them off on already-shaky ground. Trudging down his friends dark street, the two squint, trying to make out which door to approach. Joes anxious questions and his mothers placating, mild responses appear in speech bubbles accompanying square panels that show their faces head-on. In delivering these snippets of intimacy, drawn flat anddistilled in frames under the blue hues of twilight, Brownes brilliance glows. As Joe and his mom work to bring each houses interior into focus, readers both feel Joes anxiety heighten and see his fears take surreal shape on the page. Middle-class cottages with perfectly ordinary facades hold disturbing scenes and queer congregations, executed with marked specificity and unnervingclarity and color. Are those alien horns on that older bourgeois gent? Joes anxiety is sky-high by the time they finally find Toms door, leaving Mom to worry for the next two hours. At pickup time, Joe smiles, lit up inside and out, beaming golden yellow beyond the page borders, flooded with fun from a great party, one missed entirely by both Mom and readers.An amazinglyastute, artful unfurling of tightly coiled childhood social anxieties. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
