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LET’S DO NOTHING by Tony Fucile

LET’S DO NOTHING

by Tony Fucile

Pub Date: May 1st, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7636-3440-7
Publisher: Candlewick

Two boys, having exhausted all other entertainments (they’ve “played every sport ever invented...baked enough cookies to feed a small country...read every comic book,” and so on), decide to do absolutely nothing. Sal and Frankie set themselves up in chairs for the enterprise, but Frankie’s imagination gets the better of him. Told to pretend he’s a statue “carved out of stone and stuff,” he imagines pigeons alighting all over his granite body and madly starts shooing them away. He tries to imagine himself as a redwood, but a dog lifts his leg on him; as the Empire State Building, he finds King Kong clinging to his roof. Fucile renders his characters against a blue-washed bedroom background, the imaginary sequences in full color with each boy visible as a set of eyes (in Frankie’s case, glasses) staring at the reader out of statue, tree trunk or building. His background in animation makes itself felt in the dialogue-based text and exquisite sense of pacing and visual humor. Sal and Frankie’s conclusion—that doing nothing is a lot harder than it looks—will ring true with readers young and old. (Picture book. 5-8)