TITLE: Jasper & Ollie
By Alex Willan (Doubleday Book for Young Readers), $17.99
STORY: Jasper, a hyperactive fox, and Ollie, a sloth, race to the pool — according to Jasper. He decides they're racing, and he's out the door before Ollie has finished wiping pancake syrup off his mouth.
Jasper's headlong trajectory — a bold, broken red line — propels him down the stairs, through the yard, into the mailman, over a turtle that is painting a fence, past an ice cream truck, straight to the gate of the pool, where he strikes a hero pose, and then through a short course of triumphant tumbling.
Artist Alex Willan shows the hammer-headed little fox's rapid descent from celebration to fretful pacing and self-doubt as he waits for Ollie to show. The fox is working himself into quite a state when a new notion grips him — Ollie must have sneaked past him into the pool. Into the pool he goes to find Ollie.
As Jasper wreaks mayhem in the pool, Ollie is calmly descending the front stairs, his big face lifted to the blissful yellow sun.
Expertly cartooned characters and perfect narrative pacing illustrate a truth about personalities that can be hard to appreciate in real life but also is laugh-out-loud funny.
Read to Me is weekly review of short books.
Style on 05/27/2019