Let Me Finish!

by Minh Le, Isabel Roxas (Illustrator)

Overview

When our young hero settles in to read, the last thing he wants is for some noisy animals to ruin the ending of the story.

But ruin it they do.

And as it turns out, the boy is quickly approaching a surprise ending of his own! Maybe he should have listened to the animals after all. . . .

This silly, timeless picturebook with a clever meta twist introduces debut author Minh Lê's witty text and Isabel Roxas's eye-catching illustrations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781484721735
Publisher:	Disney Press
Publication date:	06/07/2016
Pages:	20
Sales rank:	172,054
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 11.10(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	AD450L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 5 Years

About the Author

Minh Lê is a national early childhood policy expert who writes regularly about children's literature at bottomshelfbooks.com and has been published in the Huffington Post, the Atlantic Wire, and the New York Daily News. He went to Dartmouth College and has a master's in education from Harvard University. Outside of spending time with his beautiful wife and sons in their home near Washington, D.C., Minh's favorite place to be is in the middle of a good book. Let Me Finish! is his debut. Visit Minh online at minhlebooks.com or on Twitter @bottomshelfbks.

Isabel Roxas is an illustrator, designer, and avid reader. Constantly in search of the perfect afternoon snack, she also holds a master's in communication design from Pratt Institute. She has illustrated numerous children's books in her native Philippines, as well as a spread for Goodnight Songs, a collection of previously unpublished work by Margaret Wise Brown. Isabel loves mangos, post offices, and stationery supplies. She currently lives in New York City with her husband and their collection of imaginary pets. Find Isabel online at studioroxas.com or on Twitter @studioroxas.

Editorial Reviews

06/01/2016
PreS-Gr 2—The sheer bliss of settling into a good book without being interrupted by spoilers is the topic of this title. A boy is so excited and filled with anticipation to read a good book, yet each time he begins a new one, lively animals share their favorite parts and ruin the story for him. From birds to bears to giraffes, everyone has an opinion they want to share with him about the book he is reading. The harder he tries to elude them, the more the animals multiply and chase him. Wherever he goes—his home, the forest, the jungle, the mountains, the sea—the animals find him and try to tell him what is in store for him. The illustrations are colorful, and the book is mostly written in dialogue bubbles. Much in the vein of Jon Klassen's I Want My Hat Back, this title leaves readers to assume an unexpected ending for the boy. VERDICT A fun storytime selection for audiences with a good sense of humor.—Vivian Ho, Port Washington Public Library, NY

School Library Journal

2016-03-30
A light-skinned child with a zigzag thatch of brown hair and enormous spectacles searches for a quiet place to read.It's not so easy. Birds lean down from the tree he has sat beneath to overshare. "Oooh, I loved that book!" says one. "Me too! Can you believe her best friend turned out to be a robot?" says another. And so it goes. Child gets a book; child finds a place to read uninterrupted. Alas, the animals continue to harass the child with comments that ruin each new story chosen. Page after page, the child is hounded by animals who need to share what happens next as the child repeatedly begs them to "LET ME FINISH!" The tale turns meta as the child seems to enter the book through an apparent rip in the paper forest. Observant readers will notice that the child is fleeing unwanted commentary by climbing through the physical book, though the logical superstructure is hard to discern. A significant misstep occurs when the protagonist swims with the precious book tucked under one arm with no consequences to its physical structure. The retro cartoonish art (which looks like a combination of colored pencil and digital art) in a palette of tans, mustards, and olive green, with bright splashes of pinks, purples, and teal, lends a pleasingly silly air to the flora and fauna.By the end, the relationship of tale to meta-tale is so unclear that readers may be left scratching their heads. (Picture book. 5-8)

Kirkus Reviews

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