I Don't Want to Read This Book Aloud

by Max Greenfield, Mike Lowery (Illustrator)

Overview

Another hilarious picture book from actor Max Greenfield, author of I Don't Want To Read This Book and This Book Is Not a Present, dedicated to introverts of all ages, about the horrors of reading aloud.

Nobody in the world actually enjoys reading aloud, do they? Impossible! After all, any number of terrible things could happen: you might come across a word you don't know how to pronounce. Or get distracted by a volcano eruption and lose your place. Even worse, you might accidentally hear the sound of your own voice! Actor Max Greenfield (New Girl, The Neighborhood) and New York Times bestselling illustrator Mike Lowery, the duo behind I Don't Want To Read This Book and This Book Is Not a Present, are back with another side-splitting picture book that's sure to have kids shouting for repeat read-alouds.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593616581
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	09/19/2023
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 9.70(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	AD660L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Max Greenfield is a New York–born actor who is best known for being interrupted by his two beautiful children, Lilly and Ozzie, as he writes this bio. Max tries to tell them that this is important and to please leave him alone, but neither child believes this, as they are certain that Mommy is the one with more important things to do and Daddy just acts silly on TV sometimes. He is the author of I Don't Want to Read This Book and This Book Is Not a Present.

Mike Lowery is an author and New York Times bestselling illustrator who has worked on dozens of books for kids. Some of his favorites are The Gingerbread Man is Lost series by Laura Murray and the Everything Awesome series which he also wrote. He likes to collect weird facts and other bits of knowledge and he draws them every morning in his sketchbook.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for I Don't Want to Read This Book Aloud:

"Hilarious . . . The reading aloud of this metatextual discourse contradicts the narrator’s avowed aversion to doing so and does it with panache." —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2023-06-21
What is the point of reading a book aloud?

Greenfield and Lowery’s latest work of metafiction—after I Don’t Want To Read This Book (2021) and This Book Is Not a Present (2022)—features an agitated unseen narrator objecting to the idea of reading a book aloud: “It’s dopey words like aloud that make me want to remain asilent.” The rambling and occasionally digressive complaint provides an excellent canvas for Lowery’s energetic, hand-drawn typography and whimsical, charmingly silly drawings. Nearly every word is in capitals and gets its own color, size, or blocky 3-D rendering, resulting in a set of stage directions for a reader’s voice, graphically indicating pacing and emphasis. The detours from the cranky harangue are amusing. The narrator literally addresses “the elephant in the room”—“Hello, Elephant!”—and a few pages later focuses on the possibility that a word like aplomb could show up. The elephant offers a helpful definition of aplomb with, well, aplomb. Concerns about the pitfalls of performance are at the heart of this monologue. At one point the narrator’s worries (“I mean, what if I lose my place?...What am I supposed to do then? START OVER?”) are itemized on the verso and repeated on the recto. The audience will possibly find this hilarious. The sly paradox, of course, is that the reading aloud of this metatextual discourse contradicts the narrator’s avowed aversion to doing so and does it with panache. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Appealing for entertainers and those who would rather just listen. (Picture book. 6-9)

Kirkus Reviews