Bad Day at Riverbend

by Chris Van Allsburg, Chris Van Allsburg (Illustrator)

Overview

Master artist and storyteller Chris Van Allsburg presents a surrealistic journey into the imagination.

This provocative story within a story leads readers to ponder the realities of fictional worlds and the lives of the characters who populate them.

Riverbend was a quiet little town, the kind of place where one day was just like all the rest and nothing ever happened. Occasionally the stagecoach rolled through, but it never stopped, because no one ever came to Riverbend and no one ever left.

The day the stagecoach stood motionless in the center of town, Sheriff Ned Hardy knew something was terribly wrong. What was the mysterious substance on both coach and horses? It would not come off. Soon it was everywhere in the tidy little village. Something had to be done, and Sheriff Hardy aimed to do it.

From two-time Caldecott winner Chris Van Allsburg, creator of Jumanji and The Polar Express.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780395673478
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/30/1995
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	640,933
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.43(d)
Lexile:	AD750L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Chris Van Allsburg is one of America’s most innovative picture book creators. He was awarded the Caldecott Medal for Jumanji and The Polar Express and received a Caldecott Honor for his very first book, The Garden of Abdul Gasazi. He has received the Regina Medal for lifetime achievement in children’s literature, a National Book Award, and a Society of Illustrators Lifetime Achievement Award, among other honors. He lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Visit him at chrisvanallsburg.com.

Chris Van Allsburg is one of America’s most innovative picture book creators. He was awarded the Caldecott Medal for Jumanji and The Polar Express and received a Caldecott Honor for his very first book, The Garden of Abdul Gasazi. He has received the Regina Medal for lifetime achievement in children’s literature, a National Book Award, and a Society of Illustrators Lifetime Achievement Award, among other honors. He lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Visit him at chrisvanallsburg.com.

Hometown:

Providence, Rhode Island

Date of Birth:

June 18, 1949

Place of Birth:

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Education:

University of Michigan College of Architecture & Design, 1972; Rhode Island School of Design, MFA, 1975

Website:

http://www.chrisvanallsburg.com

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"It's a book that starts with one point of view and steps into another. The average bildungsroman acoomplishes this kind of transition in several hundred pages: Van Allsburg does it in thirty-two." Kirkus Reviews with Pointers

Editorial Reviews

"It's a book that starts with one point of view and steps into another. The average bildungsroman acoomplishes this kind of transition in several hundred pages: Van Allsburg does it in thirty-two." Kirkus Reviews with Pointers —

From the Publisher

Van Allsburg cuts loose with this inventive spoof that will keep readers guessing right up to the end. Riverbend is "the kind of place where one day was just like the rest," and it looks it, too-a simple collection of block houses and buildings outlined in black and white. Color soon appears on the scene, however, in the form of scribbles-"great stripes of some kind of shiny, greasy slime"-that puzzle and alarm the residents of Riverbend. Sheriff Ned Hardy aims to put an end to the mystery, and rides out with a posse in search of the answer. Turns out he and his townsfolk are actually trapped in a coloring book, a fact readers discover as the point of view shifts, pulls back and reveals a crayon-wielding hand coloring the pages with glee. Van Allsburg clearly had fun with this one, and readers likely will too. All ages. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

K-Gr 3-In this fantastical Wild West story set in an actual coloring book, the ``quiet little town'' of Riverbend is mysteriously invaded by a slimy substance-crayon marks from a child's scribbles-that has the effect of stunning and paralyzing people and animals. Sheriff Ned Hardy and his men set out to get to the bottom of what has been terrorizing the town. In the end, they, too, are stopped in their tracks by the waxy slime as a child, armed with a full range of crayolas, is shown coloring in the last page of her ``Cowboy Coloring Book.'' The illustrations of the town that readers see in the first pages are, appropriately, clean black-line drawings-not the rich, multidimensional illustrations usually associated with Van Allsburg's work. Like Jumanji (1981) and Ben's Dream (1982, both Houghton), this book's creative plot steps beyond the boundaries of reality, and because of its spare, coloring-book context, the artwork must also go beyond the artist's typical style. Larger collections will want to keep up with Van Allsburg's innovativeness, but this effort is pretty much a one-trick pony that most libraries can easily skip.-Christina Linz, Alachua County Library District, Gainesville, FL

School Library Journal

This may not be a book to "re"read, but the central joke is clever the first time through, and children will want to share it as soon as they figure out what's happening. Set in the Old West, the story concerns certain strange phenomena: a blinding light that freezes whatever it touches and, when the light has passed, marks of "greasy slime" on horses, buildings, cattle, and even people in the frontier town and surrounding countryside. For most of the book, the artwork consists of bold, black outlines of figures on a white background, brightened in spots with loosely scribbled lines of color resembling a small child's crayoning. In the last few pages, the picture broadens into a shaded, full-color scene of a small child crayoning in a cowboy coloring book. Pair this with Elizabeth MacDonald's "John's Picture" (1990), in which the characters in a child's picture draw their own companions and setting.

Carolyn Phelan