The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip
The Very Persistent Gappers of Fripis that rarity, a  fable that appeals equally to literate adults and id-crazed kids. Its  author, George Saunders, is a Thomas Pynchon-approved, three-time  O. Henry Award-winning surrealist writer; its artist, Lane Smith,  is the Caldecott-honored illustrator ofThe Stinky Cheese Manand film designer ofJames and the Giant Peach. Nothing could  evoke Saunders's simple yet extravagant story better than Smith's  strange, painterly depictions of the seaside town of Frip, a place of  ornery eccentrics and oddball animals. Smith combines some of the  virtues ofGeorge  Grosz, Dr. Seuss, and the Japanese prints calledUkiyo-e("pictures of the  floating world").Gappers are baseball-sized, burr-shaped orange creatures with a  compulsion to creep up out of the sea and fasten themselves to goats,  whom they love. "When a gapper gets near a goat it gives off a  continual high-pitched happy shriek of pleasure that makes it  impossible for the goat to sleep, and the goats get skinny and stop  giving milk," writes Saunders. Since Frip survives by selling goat  milk, the children must brush gappers off the herd eight times daily  and dump them into the ocean. You simply must see Smith's picture of  Capable, the book's plucky heroine, emptying her gapper-sack from a  precarious cliff picturesquely menaced by subtly colored waves. You'll  be torn between lingering over the gorgeous artwork and flipping the  page to see how Capable will ever cope with the gapper invasion of  Frip, her obdurately past-obsessed widower papa, and her dumb, mean  neighbors (two snooty, boy-obsessed girls and a family of singers who  are harder on the ears than a keening gapper attached to the goat of  its dreams). This is a slim tale, but unquestionably one quite in  keeping with Saunders's prizewinning books. The title story ofPastoralia, for  instance, is also a fable involving class struggle and people who get  snooty about the difficulties of working with goats.The Very Persistent Gappers of Fripis a grownups' book, a kids'  book, an art book, and a cause for countless happy shrieks of pleasure.--Tim Appelo