by Neil Gaiman
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| List Price: | $7.99 |
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Product Description
"I'll swap you my dad," I said. "Oh-oh," said my little sister. What if you wanted your best friend's two goldfish so much that you'd swap anything for them, even your father? What if your mother came home and found out what you'd done?
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 wonderful picture book from the creative, warped mind of Neil Gaiman, 2008-12-06
When I read this book, it made me GOL. (guffaw out loud). It is both surreal and "super real" at the same time. True, it's not some sugar-coated didactic story with some lofty moral to teach. The humor, in fact, lies in the fact that it often portrays how children sometimes "really act". At least, children I know. Mainly my own. I can totally see my older son "playing at putting mud down his brother's back" (whom he loves with a passion). And I could see my brother and me in the exchange, "I could be a rock star", boy; "you could be an idiot", girl. And what child wouldn't want to tie his/her sibling up and gag him/her? It's so funny when the mother matter-a-factly unties the sister and asks "Do you know where your father is?"
The boy protagonist, who, by his own admission, thinks of brilliant ideas (like discovering electricity, or outer space, or something), wants those two goldfish that his friend Nathan has, so much that he is willing to trade anything for them. Even his dad. Long suffering, newspaper-reading, imperturbable dad. Despite this genius idea, and in accordance with his sister's prediction, their mother is not amused. She demands that they get rid of the fish, and get their dad back.
Well, it seems that dear old dad is too boring for Nathan, and, through a series of trades, he ends up in a rabbit run that belonged to a kid who had a rabbit named "Galveston". Munching on a carrot. Still reading. So, much to the delight of all involved, everything is restored to it's proper owner, and big brother, with sister in tow, takes dad, still reading, home. I liked the part where, when Patti, the owner of the rabbit, says, "He's not a very good rabbit", and the boy answers, "He's not meant to be. He's a very good daddy."
Mom makes son promise to never trade his dad away again. Which he does, even though sibling rivalry never ends. Such is the stuff of childhood. With a no-nonsense mom, and an unflappable dad, I predict that all will survive. And thrive.
A word about the art: great! The more I looked at it, the more I realized how brilliant it is, and how perfectly Dave McKean's illustrations mesh with Neil Gaiman's text. The style is decidedly post-modern, with it's collage of painting, drawing, and photographs, and I believe that it captures the feeling in the story perfectly. One thing that I noticed is that we see everything from the kids' point of view. Notice how the parents' faces are practically never shown in close up. Just the kids vantage point,and the parents heads are often not in the picture. The illustrations may be rather weird, but they are perfectly expressive. BTW, the words to the story are not printed on the pages, but rather scrawled in speech bubbles, and among the colored pages. As such, it is truly a picture book to be READ TO younger kids, or also, to be enjoyed by older kids and adults who can read well. I liked it.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Love the artwork, 2008-08-13
The plot line was a little abstract for my four-year-old nephew and a little childish for my seven-year niece.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
What about Dad, 2007-11-06
As a reader and collector of children's literature, I find this book charming. Few books are devoted to relationships between Dad and kids. This carries with it some patterns of relationship many will find in their own families. Let's hear it for DADS!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Out there, 2007-09-17
Picked up this book by chance, and my 6 yr old loved it (as did I). The irreverance about the dad, who's basically not paying attention, is funny, and taps into kids hidden feelings. And the connect-the-dots effect of the story is very appealing.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 Funny Absurdism -- with a VERY nasty edge!, 2007-05-24
One minor problem for me, that is evidently not a problem for many others, was the art. I was put off by the blotchy, surrealistic, color-schemes, which were distracting, and rarely added to whatever charm the line-drawings had.
Getting past that, I was able to enjoy the silly story. Humor is often generated when the tension is created by horror or fear, but then is punctured by absurdity.
All decent people should be horrified by the idea of buying and selling other human beings like objects, in pursuit of materialistic goals. Here, however, the absurdity of the situation breaks the tension. We know that virtually no real child would want to sell their father. Moreover, the idea of this rather useless dad permitting himself to be bartered all over town by children, without ever once looking up from his newspaper, is completely nonsensical. I suppose children might laugh, just as I did.
Another saving grace is that, even though the story is told from the point of view of the creepy little sociopath who sells his dad, there were other characters for me to root for. I was completely on the side of the little sister, who (quite properly) objects and protests the scheme. She (quite properly) rats him out to his mother. The mother is also suitably furious, and makes this little materialist promise never to do sell his dad again. Morever, since the bulk of the story concerns the quest to RECOVER the bartered-off dad, even the boy is doing the right thing for much of the narrative.
But there's a catch. You see, he never promised anything about not selling his little sister. The last panel shows the brother's huge shadow, mouth open with glee, reaching like an ogre for his little girl, who looks small, isolated, helpless.
This time, I did not laugh.
Why not? This time, sadly, the absurdity of the situation does not punctuate the horror. It is not absurd enough, and it is too horrific. We do not think the boy is joking. Earlier in the tale, we actually saw the little sister bound and gagged by the older brother to prevent her ratting on him to Mom (a disturbing enough scene in its own right). Moreover the pictures make the boy look mush larger and stronger than his little sister -- the situation lacks the obvious jokiness of bartering off one's much-larger dad while he never looks up from his newspaper. Even the THREAT of selling your little sister to your friends is potentially a nasty and frightening form of abuse.
Gaiman's afterword tells us the story reflects real and bitter hostility that existed between two of his children, and further reflects similar bitter hostility between himself and his own sister. This seems to confirm that the final panel reflects genuine malice. How, then is it a joke? If bitter hostility between siblings is a problem -- and it often is -- ought not the message, in a picture book ostensibly marketed for children, be a bit more positive? Payback time, little girl -- I guess you shouldn't have ratted out your creepy older brother. Funny to Gaiman, perhaps, but not to me.
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