Homophones make for great elementary school comedy, in addition to dad jokes. Piece Out takes that homophone madness, adds a splash of early 90s slang, some Toy Story, and everyday things that kids will understand and laugh at. The frustration of a missing puzzle piece or someone’s favorite piece or character for family game night will provide a lifetime of memories. “You always had to be the car” or “I wanted to be red for the longest time” are just a couple of things people will remember from their youth.
Honestly, I rolled my eyes when I first opened Piece Out. I was very excited to read the synopsis of the book. The adventures that a piece of a board game can have when it’s left out of that madcap sense of fancy and wonderment, when a kid imagines what their toys do at night or what happens in the refrigerator when the light goes out.
Halfway through the second page of this illustrated book, kids will start to see the payoff. As the family is enthusiastically digging into game night they’re unaware that the red piece to the game is under the table. On this page readers won’t see the personification of the red piece yet. It’s just a simple piece of red plastic that resembles a pawn from Chess.
It’s when the box is packed up the action zooms in on red. It suddenly has big, emotive eyes and a minimalist mouth. Kids will immediately understand how red is feeling. It’s used to being in the box, but suddenly is experiencing the larger world its only heard about. A hungry, noisy robot with one light for an eye tries to gobble it up. Red narrowly escapes to a dark cave where forgotten members of his kind have sought refuge. Plastic animals are eating discarded snacks and it feels like The Lost Boys or Lord of the Flies. They make their own rules, have learned to live outside of the box and respect the safety of the S.O.F.A.
Red gets a crash course in the home’s layout. It climbs the transparent cliffside and makes its way through the hanging forest. Just as it sees the shelf where the board games are kept something unexpected and horrific happens to it. One of the family members picks red up, takes it farther from the shelf and puts it into the junk drawer. It could accept defeat and a life that’s destined to be a useless thing in the mystery drawer. But instead of that, it plots its escape and plans to rejoin its friends in the box.
Two large plot twists in Piece Out provides a boost of energy to an already engaging story. They make an otherwise cute book run with energy and gives first-time readers a grinning, wide-eyed frenzied sense that they knew it all along.
The first one is the fake-out ending where the red piece gets picked up by the human. It’s within sight of the game box, but the human takes it to the junk drawer. How will red recover from this? But, I’m only halfway through the book, there must be more to it…is what savvy young audiences will immediately notice. The other twist is the ending. It ends in a finite manner, but also launches itself into what could be another book. It probably won’t be another book, but it’s got that vibe that exists at the end of Back to the Future. The grin that says, “of course they did”, or one that leaves audiences wondering what would happen in their next adventures.
It’s a rare thing when a book ends on a high note, but Piece Out does that. This is a fun, simple, relatable illustrated book with a story every kid can understand with enough imagination to allow their minds to wander with its own tale. There are teachable elements like not giving up and the value of belonging with friends or family. Those lessons never come across as pushy or dominant. Instead, Piece Out lets the fun take center stage and it never looks back.
Piece Out is by Alex Willan and available on Astra Books for Young Readers.
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