Julia Eccleshare's October 2015 Book of the Month The much-loved Eric Carle’s The Nonsense Show more than lives up to its title! Using his trade-mark collage illustrations he has created spread after spread of surprising and unusual events. Humans and animals are all busy doing most unlikely things: there are humans travelling in cars using leg power and not an engine; fish in a bird cage and a bird in a water tank; a horse and its rider who have got each other’s head on. The result is laugh-out-loud fun which invites readers to ask questions about things we take for granted. ~ Julia Eccleshare
Ducks growing out of bananas? A mouse catching a cat? What's wrong with this book? Yes, there's something strange, something funny and even downright preposterous on every page of this book But it's not a mistake - it's nonsense! And it's also surrealism.
Nonsense lies at the heart of many beloved nursery rhymes. Children readily accept odd statements like the cow jumped over the moon and the dish ran away with the spoon. This fanciful bending of reality is also basic to surrealism.
‘’The Nonsense Show is the final part of a trilogy of Carle homages to art, along with The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse and Friends’’ - The Guardian
‘’The Nonsense Show for children is a fantastic colourful story of an upside-down world - which the adult in us will also enjoy as a wonderful celebration of surrealism.’’ – Francesca Dow
“The book, with its cleanly designed white pages, makes the unexpected elements of the imagery stand out and prompts questions and wonder.” - Horn Book
Author
About Eric Carle
Eric Carle (25 June 1929 - 23 May 2021) was acclaimed and beloved as the creator of brilliantly illustrated and innovatively designed picture books for very young children.
His best-known work, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, has eaten its way into the hearts of literally millions of children all over the world and has been translated into more than 50 languages and sold over 33 million copies.
Since the Caterpillar was published in 1969, Eric Carle illustrated more than seventy books, many best sellers, most of which he also wrote, and more than 110 million copies of his books have sold around the world.
