Lost in a Book is easy to love. It’s easy to love being lost in a book. I have taught many students who have told me, with a glimmer of pride, they’ve never been lost in a book. Sometimes they’ll shake up that statement by saying that they don’t read books. Personally I love it when they say that because I’ll immediately say, “ignorance is nothing to be proud of” or something off the cuff that will make the class laugh and put the bully down a peg. It’s a different scene when you’re in elementary school because that is a time when your reading can shine. Ideally, it’s the time when you’ll learn to love to read, and Lost in a Book is the sort of vehicle that will accommodate that.
It’s a silly book that brims with cartoon energy reminiscent of The Monster at the End of This Book. Lost in a Book follows the adventure of two friends. Chad and Oliver see all sorts of warning signs as the two approach the gutter of the book. The gutter is that space where two pages join in a deep crevice sealed by the book’s spine. The two are out for an adventure and the only way to get to the other side is to cross the gutter. They get a running start and take a huge leap, but Chad doesn’t make it and gets stuck in the gutter. His glasses are on the ground near Oliver, with his calls for help coming out in speech bubbles from that area you previously didn’t know even had a name.
Oliver gets a massive coil of rope and thrown one end of it to his friend, but it sucks up the entire length of it. He gets some help from the house painters, but they get sucked into the gutter too. A group of cyclists comes pedaling across the page. All the animals in the zoo escaped and are running towards Oliver. The fire and police department come to rescue Chad, but meet the same end as everyone and everything else.
Finally, a librarian comes walking by and tells Oliver that it’s easy to get lost in a book. She gives him (as well as the readers) instructions on how to get out of a book when you find yourself lost in it. The friends are reunited in a two-page spread (that goes across the gutter!) that retrieves everyone (and everything) that went missing in an illustration that would make Billy from The Family Circus and Sergio Aragones proud. Lost in a Book ends with the two lying on the floor of the library vowing to enjoy reading book, as opposed to the physical adventure they just had.
It was those next-to-final two pages where I realized why I was enjoying the book so much. There’s a manic, kinetic energy in the book that will remind older readers of something classic. For me, it was author/illustrator Chris Britt’s style, which I found reminiscent of Sergio Aragones. It’s entirely Britt’s, and has the minutia in its details that make it sublime and very funny.
The book’s cover, which wraps around to the back, offers many examples of this. An elephant is standing on the “B” in Book, and it’s starting to crack. There is a collection of other animals lounging around or on the letters. There are a couple of bicycle tires bouncing around the front and back. The house painters and their blue paint is sprinkled around for good measure. The rope that was easily sucked into the gutter is twisting through the illustration and eventually running off the page.
Lost in a Book has factors that elementary-ages will love. Those kids that understand the metaphor, ‘lost in a book’ will try to explain to those that don’t. It’s akin to the joke, “when is a boy not a boy?”, and trying to explain its punch line. I was always on the side of, ‘they boy is still a boy, his condition didn’t change-he just turned into a store.’ There’s a twist in Lost in a Book that distills that joke’s ambiguity to where audiences will have no doubt that they, the readers, are the ones who are lost in a book.
It’s also not really a book. The narrative story is not the same. There isn’t a typical problem. One of the main characters is physically not there for a majority of the book. There’s a grounded sense of zaniness, until Oliver’s statement to the readers makes them realize the most unlikely of all punch lines for some elementary ages. Lost in a Book is fun and it’s not fun because kids like or don’t like the subject matter. All kids have to do in order to enjoy Lost in a Book is to like to smile, grin and maybe guffaw, the book will do the rest.
Lost in a Book is by Chris Britt and is available on Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Abrams Books.
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