Books › Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things . .
Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things . .
That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, ... Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out
202 pages
A delightfully weird and slightly subversive funhouse of stories that refuses to take itself or the adult world too seriously.
What it feels like
Reading this collection feels like stumbling into a secret club where the adults have finally admitted they don't know what they're doing and decided to just have fun instead. The pace is brisk and bouncy, leaping from one bizarre scenario to the next with a gleeful, chaotic energy. It wraps the reader in a mood that is simultaneously whimsical and mildly eerie, like a carnival operating just after dusk. The prose across the various stories shares a distinctly wry, deadpan edge, never talking down to its audience but rather inviting them in on the joke. It is an absolute delight for precocious younger readers who appreciate a touch of the macabre, as well as older readers who still harbor a deep affection for the delightfully absurd.
- Mood
- whimsical
- offbeat
- mildly eerie
- chaotic
- Tone
- wry
- irreverent
- playful
- absurdist
- deadpan
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- embracing weirdness · absurdity of adulthood · subversive imagination · childhood independence
- The writing
- The sentences are sharp, clever, and delightfully unpredictable, refusing to talk down to younger readers while winking at older ones.
- The arc
- The reader bounces through a funhouse of bizarre scenarios, experiencing bursts of mild dread and sharp laughter before arriving at a satisfyingly off-kilter equilibrium.
- Who it's for
- Perfect for precocious kids with a dark sense of humor and adults who never quite outgrew their appreciation for the delightfully strange.
Content notes
- mild peril
- eerie situations
- cartoonish violence
About the book
A collection of stories for wise young people and immature old people!A collection of stories for wise young people and immature old people, written by today's best authors spinning new tales. Each story features fullcolor illustrations by artists including Barry Blitt, Lane Smith, David Heatley, and Marcel Dzama.The collection includes previously unpublished children's stories from Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything Is Illuminated), Nick Hornby (High Fidelity), Neil Gaiman (Sandman), George Saunders (CivilWarLand in Bad Decline), Kell Link (Stranger Things Happen), and Jon Scieskza (The Stinky Cheese Man).From the Trade Paperback edition.
Description from Open Library.
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