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CM . . .
. Volume XX Number 37. . . .May 23, 2014
There are almost always consequences for what we do. We have seen picture book renditions of the effects of a yawn passed along or a smile shared. In Slam!, events are considerably more chaotic as a distracted young boy moves through a landscape of wild antics resulting from his having slammed the door on the way out of the house. (After, of course, a disembodied voice has told him not to!)
Pratfalls and sudden and unexpected encounters ensue. Almost the only text throughout all this visual mayhem consists of sound effects: the YAAAARGH of someone surprised, or the CRUNCH! of a collision. Near the end, the boy becomes aware on his homeward journey long enough to wonder, “Wow! What a mess! I wonder WHO did that?” Candy-coloured cartoon illustrations - amusing human and animal figures on simple backgrounds - fill the pages with action. Slam! is not a book to be read aloud but to be pored over by an individual child who wants to discover every messy detail. The artist, Adam Stower, is English, and the book was originally published in England by Templar in 2005. This edition is a reprint from OWL Kids. Slam! is a book to be added to public and primary school library collections. Recommended. Ellen Heaney is a retired children’s librarian living in Coquitlam, BC.
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Wearing headphones, reading a comic and leading a stumpy dog with a quizzical expression, the boy walks obliviously through streets where spilled groceries lead to a runaway skateboard that causes a truck carrying a load of live fish to disgorge its contents and so on.