FORTY THE FORTUNE TELLER
by Drew Daywalt ; illustrated by Kevin Cornell
An epic quest to save the day begins with an unlikely hero.
A folded paper fortune teller game discovers that she’s been abandoned on the school playground before anyone got a chance to use her. After she meets up with a partially eaten chip named (you guessed it) Chip, the two set off to return an errant bolt to a slide’s ladder. Along the way, they encounter various foes—a squirrel, a basketball, a cloud—each of whom is defeated as Forty tells them a ridiculous fortune (“Your bottom will turn into balloons and you will float away!”) that inexplicably becomes true. By the end, it’s clear that “Forty” doesn’t stand for “Fortune Teller” but for “Fortitude,” and the tale concludes with a tacked-on message about how everyone can write their own fortunes. Frankly, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Throughout, Daywalt throws a wide variety of ideas onto the page with only the most tenuous strings of connection keeping the story together. Thematically, the book resembles his The Legend of Rock, Paper, Scissors (2017), illustrated by Adam Rex, yet it lacks that work’s cohesive and comprehensible storytelling, raising more questions than it answers. Cornell’s lively, comic book–style art tries in vain to wrestle Daywalt’s writing into some semblance of order.
Comprehension sacrificed in the name of goofiness.
(Picture book. 4-7)