Nobody's Perfect

by David Elliott, Sam Zuppardi (Illustrator)

Overview

Not being perfect has its virtues in this irresistible child’s-eye view.

Your best friend is kind of a show-off. Your baby sister is loud. And Mom can be pretty stubborn. Not perfect! But sometimes they come pretty close, and you do, too. David Elliott’s winning, tongue-in-cheek text combines with Sam Zuppardi’s fresh, kid-friendly illustrations to show that life may be more about patience than perfection, and that focusing on the positive reaps its own rewards.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763666996
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	02/10/2015
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 10.70(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

David Elliott is an award-winning author of many books for children, including the New York Times best-selling And Here’s to You! as well as On the Farm, In the Wild, and In the Sea, all illustrated by Holly Meade, and On the Wing, illustrated by Becca Stadtlander. He lives in Warner, New Hampshire.

Sam Zuppardi is the author-illustrator of The Nowhere Box and illustrated the middle-grade series The Misadventures of Edgar and Allan Poe by Gordon McAlpine. He lives in York, England.

Editorial Reviews

Zuppardi's loose, scribbly, deceptively child-styled pencil outlines vibrate with energy, and his colorful acrylic backgrounds feature uninhibitedly visible brush strokes, drips, splotches and lines made from pulling a tool through wet paint. The kids have enormous heads; their wide-open mouths are unabashedly colored in with gray pencil.
—Kirkus Reviews

Loose drawings, full of scribbly pencil lines, busy up the surface and have an unfinished look: just as the boy is a work in progress, so is his world, exuberant with color and frenzied detail. ... In this era of striving for parental perfection, the idea that imperfections are no reason to despair is a pretty good theme for a picture book and should be appreciated by both reader and listener alike.
—Booklist

David Elliott offers 4- to 8-year-olds a bit of emotional release with “Nobody’s Perfect,” a picture book whose jaunty tone and charitable theme are perfectly matched by Sam Zuppardi’s bright, explosive, scribbly illustrations.
—The Wall Street Journal

Perfect for readers who like oversized cartoon drawings
—Children's Bookwatch

From the Publisher

2014-11-04
Nobody's perfect, and that's actually fine.A boy sits on the bottom step of an indoor staircase musing about imperfections. His baby sister, Gigi, is loud. His best friend, Jack, is "kind of a show-off." His mother won't listen when he insists that the dog's habit of sleeping on his bed should be blamed on the dog. That last disagreement explains why he's sitting here, in a timeout. His own imperfection, he thinks, is messiness: His room has toys everywhere and drawers bursting open. After he cleans, it's demonstrably worse—the drawers have leaped free of the dressers, and the floor is nigh impassable. But messiness is key to joy and artwork, Jack's showing off is fun when it's playful, and Gigi's clamor enables thrilling, pot-banging screamfests. The boy forgives his mom's supposed flaw too, but he doesn't reframe it—she's OK because "[s]ometimes she does listen," not because her trait is sometimes a boon. This uneasy break in the pattern dilutes the interesting point that flaws aren't always flaws. Zuppardi's loose, scribbly, deceptively child-styled pencil outlines vibrate with energy, and his colorful acrylic backgrounds feature uninhibitedly visible brush strokes, drips, splotches and lines made from pulling a tool through wet paint. The kids have enormous heads; their wide-open mouths are unabashedly colored in with gray pencil. Not the most fascinating or consistent storyline, but snazzy artwork spruces it up. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews