Toys Go Out Just Rocked My World
Toys go out : being the adventures of a knowledgeable Stingray, a toughy little Buffalo, and someone called Plastic
by Emily Jenkins; Paul O Zelinsky
I just picked up Toys Got Out, what a great book! An outstanding read aloud, it’s very much in the spirit of Winnie the Pooh, updated. It’s a short collection of stories with the same three main characters: a stuffed buffalo, a stingray and a rubber ball name Plastic (who experiences some existential angst in chapter two in a search for self-knowledge). There’s also a bath towel named TukTuk and a singing washing machine named Frank.
Really, what more do you need to know?
There are some fabulous little bits in this that gave my 5 year old and I full-on belly laugh attacks. And you know an author who has the dad doing the laundry has their act together.
And on a tangent… I was just in a workshop last week on Visual Thinking Skills, in which a super librarian insisted that picture books would make excellent material for VTS. The Zelnisky drawings in this book are a perfect example. They are beautiful, and tell a story, without being too literal. I’m going to try them out some time.
Pam, I am delighted you highlighted this title. I dislike animated toy stories, as a genre, and titles which can be described as whimsical often set my teeth on edge — but I loved The Toys Go Out!
I felt compelled to read bits aloud to my family, who all enjoyed it too. Now when we run into a tricky social situation, we sometimes say, “You know, when you invite one towel, you have to invite them all.”
29 Mar 2007 at 12:31 pm