The Backwards Birthday Party

by Tom Chapin, John Forster, Chuck Groenink (Illustrator)

Overview

Have a happy birthday—the backwards way! Full of fun and based on the hit song from Tom Chapin and John Forster, this is a celebratory birthday bash like no other.

Put your clothes on inside out, heat up the ice cream, and hang on to your party hats—because everything’s out of whack at the backwards birthday party!

From beloved, three-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Tom Chapin, four-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter John Forster, and with stunning illustrations from Chuck Groenink comes the zaniest birthday party you’ll ever attend.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442467989
Publisher:	Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	02/17/2015
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	745,633
Product dimensions:	11.00(w) x 10.20(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Tom Chapin has entertained, amused, and enlightened audiences of all ages for more than forty years and through twenty-seven CDs, eight Grammy nominations, three Grammy awards, and thousands of live performances. A pioneer in the field of children’s music, he is also a respected singer-songwriter and a strong advocate for the arts in education. Tom lives in Piermont, New York. Find out more at TomChapin.com.

John Forster is a singer-songwriter, playwright, and humorist whose acclaimed output includes musicals on and off Broadway, Grammy-nominated recordings, humor books, and many delightful projects for children, including the perennial stage musical How to Eat Like a Child and a dozen albums with Tom Chapin. John’s comedy CDs include Entering Marion, Helium, and Broadsides, a duet album with Tom featuring their satire for NPR. John lives in South Nyack, New York. For more information visit JohnForster.com.

Chuck Groenink is the illustrator of The Backwards Birthday Party and a few other books. Originally from the Netherlands, he now lives with his wife and cats in Valatie, New York. When not drawing pictures for books, he likes to read, bake bread, or go hiking, and he wishes he could play the banjo. Visit him online at ChuckGroenink.com.

Editorial Reviews

12/08/2014
A topsy-turvy song from Chapin’s 1994 children’s recording, Zag Zig, becomes an equally zippy picture book. The celebration at hand is a boy’s birthday party that begins one morning when “the sun was sinking low” and wraps up in the glare of day, when the boy notes, “And I was one year younger than I’d been the day before.” In the intervening hours, party guests eat birthday cake first (“The ice cream was hot./ The candles were not”) and allow a blindfolded donkey to pin a tail on them (even the typography gets in on the fun, reading from bottom to top in an early scene). Madcap silliness reigns “at the backwards birthday party!/ the partyday birthwards back,” and Groenink (Santa Clauses) keeps pace, creating a rowdy menagerie of animal partygoers (an ape puffs into the wrong end of a clarinet, a cat and goose share a pair of pants) who sing and dance the night away—or is it morning? The mixed-media illustrations hum with energy, movement, and color, capturing the spirit of this anything-goes celebration. Ages 4–8. Illustrator’s agent: Stephen Barr, Writers House. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

12/01/2014
PreS-Gr 2—This is an admirably illustrated version of a catchy tune created by Chapin and Forster in 1994 on the album Zig Zag. Youngsters will delight in the story's wackiness: "On my birthday/morning/the sun/was/sinking/low./I put my clothes on inside out/and down the stairs did go." Nonconformity abounds with an incongruous progression of events and backwards text among the title and illustrations, along with the silly refrain "The backwards birthday party! The partyday birthwards back." The birthday boy, with his modish look, is surrounded by almost two-dozen happy animal friends in colorful yet muted tones created with pencil, Photoshop, and gouache. The detailed illustrations, the backwards text, and the illogical succession of events offer great opportunities for discussion, especially letter knowledge and narrative skills, and, of course, there's the added benefit of singing the text as well. Music is included on the endpapers.—Gaye Hinchliff, King County Library System, WA

School Library Journal

2014-11-04
What if birthdays were backward?A young Caucasian boy wakes up ready to celebrate his birthday only to find that time is moving backward. As the fanciful refrain says, they are, "[a]t the backwards birthday party, / where everything's out of whack. / The backwards birthday party! / The partyday birthwards back." A bouncing, jovial rhyme describes the reversed sequencing as the story moves forward—er, backward. The sun sets, the animals say goodbye, and then they enter the house in a most perplexing manner. Colorful, appealing illustrations portray the boy and his animal friends with just the right amount of detail as they eat cake first thing (hurray!) and the boy wraps presents and hands them out to each animal. The boy's parents watch, flummoxed, as confusion and backward behavior abound. With the exception of a sentence that reads oddly (it begins at the bottom of the page and moves up), all is smooth and silly here. Youngsters will giggle along with this lighthearted selection as they relish all the important moments that birthdays bring and learn about sequencing and time in an enjoyable way. A nice selection for any collection and, of course, an excellent birthday present. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews