What Goes Around Comes Around - Hardcover

McGuire, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670863963 ISBN 13: 9780670863969

Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers, 1995

Synopsis

The author of Night Becomes Day presents a clever story of unforeseen events and inevitable consequences, triggered by a sister's doll that mysteriously falls from a window.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

As in McGuire's Night Becomes Day and The Orange Book, stylish retro graphics are the main event in this picture book, its whirlwind plot notwithstanding. Early on, a not-so-innocent-looking boy stands next to an open window in New York City ("When he was asked if he had seen his sister's doll, he said 'no'"). Meanwhile, a stick-figure-style doll-its mouth set in a nervous line and its three blue hairs standing on end-ricochets off the street, nearly causes a traffic accident and lands on a box heading out to sea. The doll's itinerary, charted on a map on the endpapers, includes Casablanca, Shanghai and San Francisco, with stops on a ship and a plane along the way; the doll bumps into a leaping camel in Cairo and a green-and-red snake in Bombay. In the end the toy bounces back through the New York window, popping the culprit upside the head ("And POW! What goes around comes around"). McGuire's compositions pair static silhouettes with line drawings and gestural sketches that suggest perpetual motion; all the images are geometric and stencil-perfect, softened by grainy colored-pencil details and an abundance of white negative space. His spreads give a wide angle on the action, and his wide-eyed, startled animals-among them an elephant and a honking red bird-add to the sense of urgency. Ages 5-up.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Ages 5^-8. Similar in concept to McGuire's well-received Night Becomes Day (1994), this picture book begins with a girl's doll falling out a window. It bounces in the street, nearly hitting a motorcycle, which nearly hits a truck, which slams on its brakes, knocking off a box, which falls into the sea . . . What ensues is a long adventure that shows quite vividly that for every action there is a reaction. Although the story doesn't have the depth of the previous book, it will still elicit some laughs as well as a sense of completion when the doll comes right back to where it belongs. Once again, the artwork has that 1950s sensibility combined with a 1990s tongue-in-cheek attitude. It relies on interesting shapings and pure colorings, with snow-white backgrounds also playing an important role in the specialized look. Older kids may get a kick out of this, too, and art students will certainly want to check it out. Ilene Cooper

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0670863963
• ISBN 13: 9780670863969
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 40