Just a Minute

WARNING: If you're about to purchase this book because you understand a book entitled "Just a Minute" won the 2004 Pura Dupre Award CEASE AND DESIST! This is not the book you are looking for. Yes, both books were published in 2003. Yes, they are both picture books. But though this may seem a tempting purchase, you would be mistaken to lay down your cold hard cash for it. If, on the other hand, you know perfectly well which book this is (thank you very much) then I invite you to read my humble review. Meet Johnny MacGuffin, a boy with a permanent curl-lick of the bangs and round horn-rimmed somewhat-Harry-Potterish glasses who is in a predicament. His mother has left him in the basement of an enormous Marshall-Fieldsesque store with his aunt while she goes shopping for, "just a minute". Johnny's concept of time flutters and fails him in this time period, and while she is gone he imagines (panic-striken all the while) that years have passed. One minute it's Christmas. The next, he's grown a beard. Next (and most improbably) he's, "gotten married, had five kids, and bought a house on the hill, waiting in Bindle's department store". Love the goatee. Finally, after he's become a grey-haired old man, his mother appears again looking faaaaabulous. Johnny is once more a child and the two set off for... more shopping.There's no denying the vivacity of this book. When Johnny isn't pressing his nose to the windows of the store he's drowning in a strange sea as the sun burns, "to a cinder of vermilion". The colors are bright and lively and the illustrations well composed. Details (like Johnny's glasses suddenly becoming bifocals when he's an old man) will continually catch your eye. Kids might enjoy finding the odd large-beaked bird that appears in the oddest of moments throughout the tale. But I was not overwhelmingly impressed. Here's the deal: Though Johnny may only be pretending that he's growing old as his mother is upstairs, it's unclear that this is all (in some odd way) a dream. When the very store itself crumbles from the force of an earthquake, kids are going to wonder how and why it's happening. Moreover, when Johnny's mother reappears and everything looks exactly the way it was... heck I was confused for a while. Why does Johnny need to learn, "how to walk again" at the end? Why, when he's told at the end that there will be more shopping, do his hands suddenly quake and steam? I know this is all a metaphor for how children feel when their adults abandon them for the supposed "minute" but couldn't this have been conveyed with a little more clarity? In the end, the book's going to raise a lot more questions than it could ever answer. The literal minded child will not take to this book.The open-minded child just may like this story, however. If you've a hankering for a tale that displays a childish mindset in the face of abandonment, this might be the book you'd like. But if it isn't, don't be too surprised. It may si

I loved this book!I think everyone can relate to this wait-y subject. Have you ever had to wait? For your mom? Dad? At the doctor's office? For the kids? Do you ever feel as if you can't wait one more minute?!Well, the same goes for Johnny. As he waits for his mother in Bindle's Department store time drags on to historical and hysterical proportions.A definate boon to your picture book collection. Also check out Becker's THE CHRISTMAS CROCODILE--another favorite in our family.