Free Lunch

Just in case you're new to this whacked-out series, the San Francisco-based team of Seibold and Walsh open with a few relevant facts in a opening page right out of Disney's Toon Town, or Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland." (The page, like much of the book features about a dozen flat colors, optical effects, and a font called "arbitrary bold." Here's the opener: MR. LUNCH WAS VERY GOOD AT CHASING BIRDS* IN FACT HE WAS A PROFESSIONAL* our story begins..." And it never lets up. It's very much like a theme park ride, if the designer let go of most conventions, indulged in a sort of minimalist cubism/punk aesthetic (mixed with a little Dr. Seuss and some genetically-altered styrofoam), and had the free-wheeling command of a Jack Kerouac. This artistic garbage (and I say that with affection) isn't easy, it only looks like it. It mixes so many artistic styles that it's like taking a computer-speeded one-minute tour of an entire modern art museum. The trick is that the pictorial and narrative elements are just familiar enough that kids and adults can follow it. I think it's humorous, unconventional, and energizing, but others will hate it. Know your kid. Here's the plot, which is really kinda secondary. When he's not playfully chasing his bird friends, our hero, Mr. Lunch, sells birdseed. The seed supplier, however, is under new management; namely, an elephant who looks like the product of twisted evolution: He dresses like a poorly dressed cowboy, stands on two feet, and his trunk looks like one of those long Roman horns announcing that Spartacus has entered the building. When Mr. Lunch discovers that the new seed packets actually contain rocks, he and bird friends Ambrose and Gunhild investigate. However, the evil elephant manages to get Mr. Lunch arrested on a hastily constructed leash law, knowing that he'll languish in jail because the judge--a nocturnal owl-- will never be awake to hear his plea! The story has a spellbinding cadence, mixing long and short sentences, and delivering offbeat lines a la Daniel Pinkwater: with a totally straight face. For example, when Ambrose asks a chef to hide a little something inside a cake to help Mr. Lunch escape, the squid-ish looking chef replies "no-no, that would be breaking the baker's code." Waiting for his rescue, Lunch gazes out of a single window and sees all sorts of cloudy shapes, including a bear holding a camcorder. WARNING, SPOILER AHEAD: The birds sneak in an escape map, however, leading Mr. Lunch to a cave containing rubies and the FORMER elephant owner of the birdseed company. Our friends escape, the real elephant owner makes a hat out of a broken umbrella, the bad elephant is arrested (though he's pictured calling out "I'M SORRY!"), MR. Lunch returns to chasing his bird friends, and... I found a fold-up piece of paper in the middle of the book, obviously written by a kid, that says the following: "A Bookmark to know where you are in the book." (flip it over): "I LOVE Readin

My nephew loves Mr. Lunch, and so do I. We were very distressed to see our hero victimized by the machinations of a very, very bad elephant in this installment. However, we know that Lunch will always prevail -- with a little help from Ambrose, of course.

OK, so it may have great pictures and cute characters, but it is also a good story! Your kids will definitely love it...i did, and i am not even that young!

Mr. Seibold and Ms. Walsh have that rare ability to create an entire new world, a completely foreign world that somehow you feel you're vaguely familiar with. The writing style is dead-on and tight -- never a wasted line, never a worthless word. And the illustrations are truly brilliant. And they're all done on Adobe Illustrator, which is astonishing to me, considering that mostly I associate that product with USA Today infographics . Mr. Lunch and all the other Seibold/Walsh books are gifts from some divine probably Japanese artistic entity, likely the same one who gave us Parappa the Rapper, toy robots, and Pizzicato Five.

This book is one of those children's books you can't quite bring yourself to give to a child. The illustrations are stylishly witty, the paper high-quality, the binding and cover excellent. Even the "flap notes" are a joy to read. To top it all off, the story is my favorite from this team so far