Mr. Lunch Borrows a Canoe - Hardcover

Seibold and Walsh's (Mr. Lunch Takes a Plane Ride) eccentric canine hero and bird-chaser extraordinaire is on the move again, this time in a canoe on loan from an elephant. His first night out he is frightened by a bear, and, paddling as fast as he can, as far as he can, he eventually reaches a city where all the streets are waterways. There he finds the bird-chasing opportunity of his career: after he empties what is clearly St. Mark's Square of its ubiquitous pigeons, he is awarded the Golden Outboard Motor as a gift of gratitude, and with it makes his way speedily home. This adventure, Mr. Lunch's second, is somewhat less manic than his first outing, but it's all relative-plenty of off-the-wall humor fills both the deadpan text (in the authors' unnamed Venice, "nobody noticed a dog in a boat, because everyone was in a boat") and the zany, one-of-a-kind computer-generated art, which packs an astonishing degree of action, expression and detail onto each page. Campy yet childlike, sophisticated yet frankly silly, the Mr. Lunch books exert a quirky charm that is hard to define and even harder to resist. Ages 3-8.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Kindergarten-Grade 3-Mr. Lunch, a professional canine bird-chaser, borrows an elephant's canoe and paddles all the way to Venice, where he finds a pigeon-packed plaza to clear. Although each page of this off-the-wall story is filled with action and detail, Seibold's computer-generated cartoons are extremely stylized and one-dimensional, making it occasionally difficult to recognize simple animals (even Mr. Lunch himself) and objects (water as opposed to land). Furthermore, although the artwork is done in full color, the mustard-and-red color scheme has the appearance of old-fashioned, two-color printing. Fortunately, there are redeeming serendipitous qualities here. The two-page constellation spread depicting the dog paddling over the world to Venice and the renovated, gondola-inspired canoe that he returns to his elephant friend are especially delightful.
Claudia Cooper, Ft. Stockton Independent School District, TX
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.