The Bored Book
Grade 1–4—It's difficult to determine the audience for this wordless picture book, which is a watered-down version of Todd Strasser'sThe Pagemaster(Scholastic, 1994). Opening black-and-white sketches show a brother and sister fighting while a grandfatherly man is trying to read in a room lined with bookshelves. Tired of their squabbling, he pulls aside a bookcase to reveal a hidden staircase. Climbing it, the children find themselves in an attic full of cobweb-covered tomes and pick upThe Bored Book. As they open it, color floods from the pages, lighting up their astonished faces. The pages fold out to a huge mural that takes up the entire room and depicts many unrelated scenes. The siblings get sucked into one picture and find themselves on an icy slope facing what may be the Abominable Snowman, and in another, they confront pirates. After many adventures, they return to the old man in the dusty attic (now drawn in full color) and show him the mysterious volume. He calmly shows them shelves of titles such asTreasure IslandandSinbad. The children choose a book and are seen happily reading from it together. Keith's illustrations are too frightening for young audiences, but children who are old enough to readTreasure Islandwill not be engaged by a series of drawings about terrified kids running away from what the book flap calls "the adventure of a lifetime."—Martha Simpson, Stratford Library Association, CTEND