The Backwards Birthday Party

December 8, 2014
A topsy-turvy song from Chapin’s 1994 children’s recording, Zag Zig, becomes an equally zippy picture book. The celebration at hand is a boy’s birthday party that begins one morning when “the sun was sinking low” and wraps up in the glare of day, when the boy notes, “And I was one year younger than I’d been the day before.” In the intervening hours, party guests eat birthday cake first (“The ice cream was hot./ The candles were not”) and allow a blindfolded donkey to pin a tail on them (even the typography gets in on the fun, reading from bottom to top in an early scene). Madcap silliness reigns “at the backwards birthday party!/ the partyday birthwards back,” and Groenink (Santa Clauses) keeps pace, creating a rowdy menagerie of animal partygoers (an ape puffs into the wrong end of a clarinet, a cat and goose share a pair of pants) who sing and dance the night away—or is it morning? The mixed-media illustrations hum with energy, movement, and color, capturing the spirit of this anything-goes celebration. Ages 4–8. Illustrator’s agent: Stephen Barr, Writers House.

November 15, 2014
What if birthdays were backward?A young Caucasian boy wakes up ready to celebrate his birthday only to find that time is moving backward. As the fanciful refrain says, they are, "[a]t the backwards birthday party, / where everything's out of whack. / The backwards birthday party! / The partyday birthwards back." A bouncing, jovial rhyme describes the reversed sequencing as the story moves forward-er, backward. The sun sets, the animals say goodbye, and then they enter the house in a most perplexing manner. Colorful, appealing illustrations portray the boy and his animal friends with just the right amount of detail as they eat cake first thing (hurray!) and the boy wraps presents and hands them out to each animal. The boy's parents watch, flummoxed, as confusion and backward behavior abound. With the exception of a sentence that reads oddly (it begins at the bottom of the page and moves up), all is smooth and silly here. Youngsters will giggle along with this lighthearted selection as they relish all the important moments that birthdays bring and learn about sequencing and time in an enjoyable way. A nice selection for any collection and, of course, an excellent birthday present. (Picture book. 4-8)

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December 1, 2014

PreS-Gr 2-This is an admirably illustrated version of a catchy tune created by Chapin and Forster in 1994 on the album Zig Zag. Youngsters will delight in the story's wackiness: "On my birthday/morning/the sun/was/sinking/low./I put my clothes on inside out/and down the stairs did go." Nonconformity abounds with an incongruous progression of events and backwards text among the title and illustrations, along with the silly refrain "The backwards birthday party! The partyday birthwards back." The birthday boy, with his modish look, is surrounded by almost two-dozen happy animal friends in colorful yet muted tones created with pencil, Photoshop, and gouache. The detailed illustrations, the backwards text, and the illogical succession of events offer great opportunities for discussion, especially letter knowledge and narrative skills, and, of course, there's the added benefit of singing the text as well. Music is included on the endpapers.-Gaye Hinchliff, King County Library System, WA

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