Whose Story Is This, Anyway?

by Mike Flaherty, Oriol Vidal (Illustrator)

Overview

What’s this book about? That depends on who you ask. Our humble narrator thinks he’s got a great story for you, but he barely begins before he’s interrupted . . . by a scallywag pirate with a thrilling legend of mermaids and sea monsters! Soon an entire cast of colorful characters—including a hungry dinosaur, an alien bent on world domination, and a heroic knight—derails the boy’s saga. Everyone has a tale to tell—but if they can all get on the same page, this might turn out to be the best story ever!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781454916086
Publisher:	Sterling Children's Books
Publication date:	05/03/2016
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	646,475
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 11.10(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	AD520L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

Mike Flaherty is an author and occasional hockey coach trying to keep up with his two kids and rather voracious cats. His secret lair is hidden somewhere in New Albany, OH, and he would be the world’s greatest super-villain if he could figure out how to get his Doomsday Device working. Until then, he’ll just keep writing stories.

Oriol Vidal is an illustrator and storyboard artist based in Barcelona, Spain. He graduated from UB Barcelona with a degree in Fine Arts. Including illustrating books and magazines, Oriol has worked in animation where he developed character designs and storyboards for clients in the US, France, UK, South Korea, and Spain. He happily works and lives with his little daughter, his wife, his cat, and his rowdy budgie.

Editorial Reviews

2016-03-02
A metafictive text introduces a bevy of exciting characters. The title page indicates the tension between the competing narratives suggested by the book's title since it includes four scratched-out, but legible, titles above the main one. The book proper begins with a declaration from a brown-haired, white child that the story is great "Because it's all about me." As pages turn, however, Salty Pete the pirate, a dinosaur, an extraterrestrial named Yurxl, and Sir Knightly astride a horse all enter the story and jockey for position in asserting their own stories. The child who began the story is not amused! Increasingly crowded images introduce Vikings, robots, and zombies to the story. (All the human characters are white.) Ultimately, there's room for all when the text resolves with the statement that this is a story about when the child "met a bunch of crazy new friends," but it's hard not to feel as though both Flaherty and the narrator are caving in under the pressure. Cartoon-style digital art matches the rising excitement of the text as the pages progress and then depicts the final, calm scene in silhouette. This is a well-worn conceit in contemporary picture books, and it delivers an anticlimactic conclusion after so much buildup. It seems like the question isn't "whose story is it?" at book's end, but what other stories might have arisen through these characters? (Picture book. 4-6)

Kirkus Reviews