A brilliant picture book about a boy with an unusual attitude to books! Henry loves books but not in the same way as most people: Henry loves to eat books… He starts with just a word, then sentences until he’s built up enough stamina to eat up a whole book. With every book Henry eats, he becomes just a little bit cleverer…But there’s a moral, too. Oliver Jeffers sophisticated illustrations are witty and absorbing: the bite out of the corner of the book is a joke on its own!
Rob Biddulph on The Incredible Book Eating Boy:
One bedtime we were reading a new picture book that I’d bought her called The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver jeffers. The illustrations blew my mind. Each one was painted on an actual page or cover torn from a second-hand book, sometimes incorporating the original typography, and then photographed. It was just so clever. So beautiful. The whole package totally opened my eyes to the fact that a picture book can be a genuine work of art. So I started to look at the books we read each night in a different way. Maybe, I thought, this is something that I could do.
The mouth-watering new book from acclaimed author illustrator, Oliver Jeffers. Henry loves books...but not like you and I. He loves to EAT books! This exciting story follows the trials and tribulations of a boy with a voracious appetite for books. Henry discovers his unusual taste by mistake one day, and is soon swept up in his new-found passion - gorging on every delicious book in sight! And better still, he realises that the more books he eats, the smarter he gets. Henry dreams of becoming the Incredible Book Eating Boy; the smartest boy in the world! But a book-eating diet isn't the healthiest of habits, as Henry soon finds out...
Praise for 'How to Catch a Star': 'The best recent picture book by light years, is stylishly spellbinding. Telegraph
'A story about possibilities and disappointments with a triumphant ending, all of which Jeffers captures through the beautifully expressive changing moods of his little boy.' The Guardian
'This is a magical, beautifully illustrated tale about reaching for dreams.' Mail on Sunday
'Hail to new talent! If only all picture books could be this good.' The Bookseller Praise for
'Lost and Found': 'An uplifting story!pictures of such spare beauty!suffused with a dreamlike quality.' Independent Online
'Oliver Jeffers makes impressive use of space in this affecting story of friendship!illustrations capture feelings of loss and loneliness through the most delicate nuances of facial expression!and body language.' Julia Eccleshare, The Guardian
'Beautifully illustrated, simple warm story!little children will love to share it.' Carousel
'Jeffers has a unique writing and illustrative style. It's a wonderful picture book.' Publishing News Praise for
'How to Catch a Star': ' How To Catch A Star is a beautiful debut picture book from an extremely talented and innovative illustrator. This is a fantastic story which teaches children that if you wish hard enough your dreams just may come true
. The Bookseller
'Adults tend to think of waiting as tedious, but the magic of this book is that it understands waiting as children wait -- alert, apprehensive and using their imaginations.' Mail on Sunday
'A stunning debut!' New Talent, Books for Keeps
'If the title sounds magical and optimistic to you, it's probably because that's exactly what this book is.' Book of the Month, Junior Praise for
'Lost and Found': Completely captivating and definitely one of my favourite picture books of the year.' Becky Stradwick, Children
Oliver Jeffers has won numerous awards and delighted millions of kids and parents alike with his beautifully hand illustrated stories.
Jeffers's picture books are wonderfully accessible. They explore themes of friendship, loneliness, independence and imagination. He has written and illustrated, or "made", as he prefers to put it, five hugely successful picture books. The first three - the "boy books" - feature a small boy who sets off on a series of daunting quests. How to Catch a Star (2004), the first of them, was inspired by a Brer Rabbit story he read as a child. In Lost and Found (2005) the boy heroically rows to the south pole for the sake of an unhappy penguin, and in The Way Back Home (2007) he rescues a young Martian whose spaceship has crashed on the moon.
The Heart and the Bottle is wholly compelling for the importance of its message and the brilliance of how that is conveyed in words and pictures. This is a book to return to time and time again says Julia Eccleshare, Lovereading4kids’ editorial expert.
Jeffers was born in Australia in 1977 and brought up in Belfast. He studied visual communication at the University of Ulster, and graduated in 2001. Jeffers became passionate about making picture books when he began to understand the subtle relationship between words and pictures – ‘that was what excited me. Until I got really involved, I hadn't realised how just a few words can totally change the meaning of a picture.’ Now living in New York, he works as a painter, designer, printmaker and installation artist, but remains very busy making picture books.
Did you know?
Oliver loves plastic food, suitcase handles and Elvis, and has developed a bizarre habit of endlessly writing lists he never reads. He remains hell bent on travelling all over the world.
You can see Oliver talking about his artwork in this video:
We have a super set of Oliver Jeffers activity pages to download :
