by Jon Agee; illus. by the author

Preschool     Dial     48 pp.

10/18     978-0-525-55545-2     $17.99

Unlike Richard Byrne’s This Book Just Ate My Dog! (rev. 1/15), wherein the book’s gutter did service as a chasm to be negotiated by the characters, here it is a wall separating an idyllic — ha! — existence for a young knight from an ogre and his jungle companions. They don’t look so bad, which proves to be a good thing for the knight when his side of the wall begins to flood and the ogre reaches over and rescues him. It’s a solid wall, thank goodness, if a slim premise; the humor comes from our ability to see both sides of the wall at once, as well as the floodwaters (filled with voracious sea creatures) rising on our oblivious hero. Lightly toned watercolor illustrations with plenty of white space keep things upbeat, emphasizing the dramatic and comic possibilities to be found in a pair of eyes. The book is too funny to fall into allegory: that wall never does come down, but our little protagonist is in for a wonderful new life.

From the November/December 2018 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.