A Book "worth having children for"? The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip

I saw a review for a book today. It said, [this book is] worth having children for! Now that is a review that gets my attention. The name of the book was The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip. Amazon had a beautiful review that was fun to read all by itself. They said:

The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip.

Three families live in the seaside village of Frip — the Romos, the Ronsens, and a little girl named Capable and her widowed father. The townspeople of Frip make their living raising goats, but they must fight off a daily invasion of gappers, bright orange, many-eyed creatures that cover goats and stop them from giving milk. When the gappers target Capable's goats, the Romos and the Ronsens turn their backs on the gapper-ridden Capable. What will Capable do about her gapper plague?

But the review I liked the best of all was the one published by McSweeney's Internet Tender (for sale here at $10.00. His review of the book quoted more of the Amazon review:

An imaginative tale accented with haunting illustrations, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip is an adult story for children, a children’s story for adults, an oceanside fable for the irremediably landlocked, a fish story for loaves, and a fable about the true meaning of community.

Then they added:

I sincerely hope someday some child in my care gets addicted to this book and insists on hearing it every night for years, because I will never get bored of reading it.... Worth having a child for.

George Saunders writes for The New Yorker, was once a technical writer and worked with an oil exploration crew in Sumatra. I can only imagine what that background brings to his work. More recently he has worked at Syracuse University and is the winner of several fellowship grants. I encourage you read one or two the 122 Saunders articles in The New Yorker.

The book was illustrated by Lane Smith. If you recall Smith also illustrated the James and the Giant Peach and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. You really should go to her website Curious Pages, Inappropriate Books for Kids. I loved that one!

Do you ever buy a book written for children just for yourself? Well you are on the right track when you look at anything written by George Saunders or Lane Smith. They would be perfect.

b+

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