In this almost-wordless picture book, an escaping monkey sets off a chaotic chain of events in a busy downtown. Occasional street signs punctuate the story.
While the picture story was an intriguing idea and is a nice example of cause and effect, the action was often difficult to follow and took more than one reading to get the hang of. This makes me wonder how children would do with it. Also, while it seems like the illustrations were intended to be funny, I found a few of them more horrific than comedic. For example, a painter falls off the very top of a ladder and narrowly escapes death (or at least paralysis) by landing in a grocery cart. Later, a baby carriage goes flying into the road, then the baby is catapulted out and sails two stories into the air. The number of angry people yelling across the pages and the obvious cost of the damage caused by that one escaping monkey also lends the book a disturbing feel that permeates even the ending.
EL -- OPTIONAL. Reviewer: Caryn
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