Down The Back of the Chair
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- €10.99
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- €10.99
Publisher Description
When Dad loses his car keys, toddler Mary has a suggestion: why not see what's hiding down the back of the chair? But when they look, they get more than a few surprises...
This lively, eccentric poem is a visual explosion of fun and imagination, featuring dragons, pirates, treasure, lions, elephants and much more. Margaret Mahy's classic story celebrates the wonderful everyday, guaranteed to put a smile on the face of readers young and old.
"The entertainment, humour, and exuberance of it all arises from what Dad finds... Mahy's text rollicks along in rhythm and rhyme, and Polly Dunbar's graphics are akin to a fireworks display on the page; words, phrases and pictorial images metaphorically pop up and explode like stardust over the double spreads" — School Librarian
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When the kids suggest Dad look for his lost car keys in the depths of their wingback chair, the family's fortunes take a dramatic and deliciously silly turn for the better. Mahy's crisp rhyming quatrains, in the voice of a precocious girl, start the action at a comic pitch that escalates with every page. "We're facing rack and ruin./ No car, no work! No work, no pay!/ We're growing poorer by the day." Sticking his hand "down the back of the chair" a phrase that refers to both a universe under the seat cushion and also the book's refrain Dad turns up much more than keys or loose change. There's precious jewelry, a menagerie ranging from a conger eel to a pair of tea-drinking elephants plus "a missing twin" and a pirate with a treasure map. Dunbar's (Dog Blue) watercolor and cut-paper illustrations goose the giddiness of the text without sacrificing a visual equilibrium. She creates a tantalizing contrast as Dad grows ga-ga from the magical goings-on while his children maintain a cool sense of delight. The car keys never surface, but a rich uncle's long lost will and treasure do. It's an inspired flight of fancy and certain to turn "Down the back of the chair" into a rallying cry in many households. Ages 4-7.
