Tidy

by Emily Gravett, Emily Gravett (Illustrator)

Overview

Pete the badger learns that being tidy isn’t always the best thing in this save-the-environment picture book from award-winning author and illustrator Emily Gravett.

Pete the badger likes everything to be neat and tidy at all times, but what starts as the collecting of one fallen leaf escalates quickly and ends with the complete destruction of the forest. Will Pete realize the error of his ways and reverse his tidying habit?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481480192
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	03/21/2017
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 10.40(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Emily Gravett is the author and illustrator of many children’s books, including Matilda’s Cat, Again!, Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears (winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal), Meerkat Mail, Tidy, and Old Hat. Her first book, Wolves, was the winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Award for Illustration. Her second book, Orange Pear Apple Bear, was a Quills Award finalist, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, and on the shortlist for the Kate Greenaway Medal. Emily lives in Brighton, England, with her partner, their daughter, and the family dog. Visit her at EmilyGravett.com.

Emily Gravett is the author and illustrator of many children’s books, including Matilda’s Cat, Again!, Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears (winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal), Meerkat Mail, Tidy, and Old Hat. Her first book, Wolves, was the winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Award for Illustration. Her second book, Orange Pear Apple Bear, was a Quills Award finalist, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, and on the shortlist for the Kate Greenaway Medal. Emily lives in Brighton, England, with her partner, their daughter, and the family dog. Visit her at EmilyGravett.com.

Editorial Reviews

Pete raises a good question about the role of the oblivious disrupter. Where do dumb and discovery meet? Or how does dumb stop being dumb?…Failure is the most tested tool of learning. While some mistakes of environmental destruction might take a bit longer to correct than those in picture books, Gravett leaves her reader content in a messy, happy, blissfully imperfect restored forest, filled with perfectly imperfect creatures.

The New York Times Book Review - Samantha Hunt

★ 2016-12-21
How tidy can a forest become and remain a forest?Pete, a badger, is intense and intent on neatening his forest—no holds barred. "He tidied the flowers by checking each patch, / and snipping off any that didn't quite match." He grooms a dubious fox (using, hilariously, a hedgehog as a brush); he sweeps, scours, and vacuums; he brushes birds' beaks with toothbrushes. When autumn leaves swirl down, he bags them and stands atop the mountain of newly filled black plastic trash bags. A quick uprooting of every tree and a flood drop readers suddenly into a new visual world. Gone is the friendly vibe; gone are autumnal oranges and greens; gone is any background white space. In gray rain and murky brown mud, Pete's sharp black-and-white face and his red mop and bucket stand out, alien in the watery landscape. Still, Pete won't yield to nature. While excessive tidying isn't exactly industrialization or climate change, Pete's result—a concrete wasteland—invokes both. The rhyming verse regularly changes structure, reflecting the uncertainty of this environment. Artistic virtuoso Gravett wields her pencils, watercolors, and wax crayons (and a nifty, layered cover die cut) to create detail that's tender and sharp, with backgrounds both lush and quirky. This is an exploration of innocence, loss, the surrender of control, and—thankfully—the option of changing direction before it's too late. Alarming, timely, gorgeous, and open-ended, allowing readers the time to think for themselves. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews