Oh No! (Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World)
By Mac Barnett
Illustrated by Dan Santat
Hyperion Books
$16.99
ISBN: 978-142312312-5
Ages 4 and up.
On shelves now.
I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with a name for this new breed of children’s book author/illustrator we’re seeing these days. It’s a genre without a name. We’re seeing a lot of picture books these days that engage kids, but also turn on their heads classic picture book forms. It started with books like The Stinky Cheese Man and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and now includes titles like Pssst! or The Purple Kangaroo or Guess Again!. Oh No! (Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World) is just the latest addition to a fast growing genre hereby dubbed Juvie Satire, and it is the creation of two of the genre’s kings. Author Mac Barnett burst on the children’s literary scene running as fast as his legs could take him, and illustrator Dan Santat glides right along side him, painting every dog, cat, and chicken that happens to cross his path. Alone, they are impressive. Combined, they may well be either unstoppable or too wacked out for the average child’s mind to handle. Let’s hope for the former.
We enter this story midway through the action. As our heroine says, “Oh no . . . oh, man . . . I knew it.” Next thing we know she’s facing the retreating back of a mechanical wonder on the rampage. Says she, “I never should have built a robot for the science fair.” Flashback to her winning the top prize at the science fair, just as her creation bursts through the gym wall to cause a little mass destruction. Feeling just a twinge guilty about the whole thing (and unable to stop her robot herself), our heroine returns home and turns a small toad into a robot fighting monstrosity. This goes well, the robot is destroyed, and the mayor of the city is very pleased with the solution . . . that is, until the toad takes off after seeing a tasty airplane fly by.
I once interviewed Mr. Barnett about his writing and he had some interesting things to say on the subject of kids and their remarkable inability to feel bad about massive foibles. In terms of this book Mr. Barnett said, “I wanted to write about a very particular kind of regret that only children can feel: a regret that is sincere but also usually less acute than the situation warrants. I’m thinking particularly of an episode at 826LA, a nonprofit writing center I used to run. I walked into the bathroom to find a kid who’d flushed many paper towels down a toile
This book is g-g-g-gorgeous! Go Dan!
God, don’t you want to just pick Mac Barnett up and smoosh him? So adorable.
Oh wait we were talking about the book. Hee hee hee. LOVE the book. Love the newsreel quality, the palette, the shrugging-off-calamity aspect. Mac probably knows all about “Stuff” My Kids Ruined, http://shitmykidsruined.tumblr.com/, but it’s just what he’s talking about.
I think of that particular genre as “post-modern, meta-picture book”
I’ve noticed in influx of screenwriters in children’s books lately, though mostly in MG and YA (e.g., Greg Taylor with Killer Pizza and Derek Landy with Skulduggery Pleasant), which I think brings a certain Saturday-morning-cartoon feeling to the genre. (This is both good and bad, IMO.) Does Mac Barnett have a degree in film? Love the trailers, also the book!
Kate, I agree. Paul Feig also has crossed over from motion to print – his Ignatius MacFarland, Frequenaut! was really cool, and he has a story in the Guys Read book that’s coming out in the Fall. And he was one of the people behind Freaks and Geeks.
What I think is different about these film / TV guys is that they don’t know ‘the rules’. Skulduggery Pleasant was notable for having an adult male lead character, and it worked great. A lot of the stories in that Guys Read book are kind of transgressive in how far we think kid stories can go. I think it’s a fantastic trend.
All I have to do is look at the cover of this book and see robots, a (Golden Gate?) bridge and tall buildings and I know my kids will love it. (Uh, me too.) This is going on my must-read list. Ironically, as I was reading this review my four year old sat on a rocking horse and knocked over a fan with his rocking. His reaction was to shrug his shoulders and wander off. Totally getting “kids and their remarkable inability to feel bad about massive foibles” here.
That video had me ROARING out loud – so much so that my kids came running in to see what was happening. Right on review and can’t wait to get this book! Dan, you are brilliant…