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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... Valley Library (Lakeland) | EASY FEI | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
"Someone's calling Bobby. I'm not Bobby. I'm a lion." Bobby's parents are trying to get his attention, but Bobby is something else. For example, he's a monster, an airplane, a dinosaur. Anything but Bobby. It's not long before Bobby turns himself into an eagle soaring away with Mom, Dad, and every other grown-up in his life chasing after him. But after a daring escape into outer space, Bobby gets hungry and returns to Earth to claim his dinner. This hilarious escape story rings true to every child's struggle for independence&mdashnot to mention a full tummy.
Author Notes
Jules Feiffer was born on January 26, 1929. While working as a cartoonist, his work appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy, The Nation, and The New York Times. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartooning in The Village Voice in 1986. His other awards include a George Polk Award for his cartoons; an Obie Award for the play Little Murders; an Oscar for the anti-military short subject animation, Munro; and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Writers Guild of America and the National Cartoonist Society.
He is currently focusing on writing and illustrating books for children and young adults including The Man in the Ceiling, A Room with a Zoo and Bark, George! He has been a professor at the Yale School of Drama, Northwestern University, Dartmouth, and Stony Brook Southampton College.
Feiffer has been honored with major retrospectives at the New York Historical Society, the Library of Congress and The School of Visual Arts.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1-Everyone is always calling Bobby, and he's tired of it. In order to avoid it, the boy fantasizes that he is not Bobby, but rather he's a horse, a lion, a race car, a spaceship, etc. A few of his imaginings are a little gruesome. "Better not call me again because I'm a monster. You know what a monster does when you yell `Come here!' at him? A monster comes all right. And it tears you to pieces." The fact that he then becomes a giant who kills the monster (his former self?) is both confusing and does not mitigate the violence of his previous imagining. As the person (presumably his mother) continues to call him without a response, she also begins to threaten. In two-inch-high letters that slant aggressively up the page, she shouts, "I'm coming to get you and are YOU going to be SORRY!" When, in Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (HarperCollins, 1988), Max threatens to eat his mother up and goes off on his escapist fantasy, he returns home to find his still-hot supper waiting. The deliciously naughty protagonist of David Shannon's No, David! (Scholastic, 1998) receives reassurance at the end of that book that, yes, he is loved. When Bobby gives in to his hunger and goes home, there are no reassurances that he will not "get it" before he is fed. In all, the boy's extreme reaction to simply being called is not likely to engage readers' sympathies, and Feiffer's energetic cartoons punctuated with black slashes lend an angry, not a humorous air to the story. For books where a child's naughtiness is resolved positively, stick with the two aforementioned titles or Molly Bang's When Sophie Gets Angry-Really, Really Angry (Scholastic, 1998).-Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In a cathartic book that recalls aspects of Where the Wild Things Are, a boy refuses to answer to his name and adopts potent alter egos. At first, he slouches amid empty white space, ignoring a hand-lettered, black-ink "Bobby!" that blasts across the opposite page. "She's always calling `Bobby, Bobby, Bobby!' " he complains. "Now I'm a dinosaur. [Bobby!] Nobody goes around calling `Dinosaur, Dinosaur, Dinosaur!' all the time." His resentful statements are punctuated with quiet periods, but in the double-page image, a horrific tyrannosaurus crouches and snarls (Bobby's shock of red hair is a sign of its real identity). Next, Bobby transforms into a bristling, jagged-toothed Sasquatch that hurtles across the page in a frenzy of vicious ink scribbles. A monster comes when it's called, he says, "And it tears you to pieces. Unless I come to save you. I kill the monster with one fist. Because I'm a giant." As Bobby metamorphoses, scrawled threats ("You're in big trouble now, young man!") suggest unseen adults in hot pursuit. Bobby escapes in spaceship form and finally decides for himself when to go home: "I'm hungry. Space is stupid." Feiffer (Meanwhile) nods to the legacy of the comic strip's visual narrative with each transition; Bobby's evolution into a giant, for instance, takes place over an entire spread and seems to lift off from the page in a kind of slow-motion cinematic sequence. The oversize images crackle with energy as Bobby goes from rage to defiant joy to relieved exhaustion. Feiffer's words and pictures convey visceral anger and show uncommon respect for the moody hero. Ages 2-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Preschool, Primary) ÒSheÕs always calling ÔBobby, Bobby, Bobby!Õ all the time. I get tired of it.Ó So the quintessentially independent little boy escapes the unseen adultÕs irritating summonses by becoming a succession of vehicles and creatures, culminating in a monster bent on destructionÑand then, in a monster-terminating giant. As the threats continue to escalate (ÒYou are going to bed without TV for the rest of the week!Ó), Bobby makes ever-more-distant escapes (in a space ship: ÒMars has TV. Every channel. I can watch my shows and she wonÕt even know itÓ). Eventually, hunger brings him home, but still in disguise, and Òthey better let me watch TV. Or IÕll eat them.Ó BobbyÕs imaginative monologue appears in an assertive type, the adultÕs exhortations in broad swashes of bold flowing script that counterpoint FeifferÕs exuberantly drawn signature illustrations. Combine this take on the temper tantrum with Molly BangÕs When Sophie Gets Angry...Really, Really Angry, David ShannonÕs No, David!, and SendakÕs Where the Wild Things Are for a provocative, and possibly therapeutic, bookfest. j.r.l. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Golden-brown puppy George had his own existential difficulties finding his voice in Feiffer's last offering (Bark, George!, 1999). This time, a boy named Bobby has an existential emergency of his own when he declares (repeatedly and loudly), "I'm not Bobby!" It's the old deny-thy-parent-and-refuse-thy-name ruse, not for reasons of a familial feud, but just to get away from a demanding mother's agenda. Bobby's mother is always yelling for him, shown in three-inch-tall letters hand-scrawled across the page in thick, black lines. She yells his name, issues vague threats, and enlists the help of other relatives to chase him, but Bobby is busy transforming himself (through his considerable imagination) into commanding animals, monsters, and vehicles, with a running first-person text at the bottom of each page. Bobby's powerful emotions fairly burst off the page in Feiffer's edgy watercolors, especially when he turns into a whirling wild thing of a monster. ("A monster comes all right. And it tears you to pieces.") Eventually, after a fanciful journey in his spaceship, Bobby gets hungry and transforms himself back into a lion with "a Bobby face," who returns home, where he expects to find dinner and the restoration of his TV privileges by his parents. ("Or I'll eat them.") Some adults will object to Bobby's emotional excesses, and others will object to the mother's screams and threats, but plenty of youngsters who are wild things at heart will eat this up. (Picture book. 3-6)
