THE GREAT MONTEFIASCO
by Colin Thompson & illustrated by Ben Redlich
This import from Down Under pairs baroque illustrations to a heartwarming tale featuring a bumbling magician who doesn’t realize that his on-stage accidents bring “far more happiness to the world than any ordinary card trick ever could,” until he hires, then falls in love with, Betty, a shy and equally inept assistant. Looking like images in funhouse mirrors, Montefiasco and the other figures in Redlich’s scenes are almost lost amid an extravagant clutter of magic tricks, old posters and newspapers, toys, feathers, memorabilia, visual references to great magicians of the past, and general bric-a-brac—some of it, in homage to Thompson’s own famously busy art, filling up nooks and crannies beneath the floorboards. Pleasant tale, but the pictures are the real draw. (Picture book. 6-8)