The Rock from the Sky by Jon Klassen (review)

In this spare, humorous early chapter book of five slim chapters, the irresistible force looks set to meet the immovable object as a huge boulder plunges from the sky, hurtling toward an oblivious turtle, who muses happily about standing in its favorite spot. A groundhog-like critter has a “bad feeling” about that spot, and eventually, in the name of togetherness, the turtle moves to join the groundhog and its friend the snake—in the nick of time. Other chapters involve the turtle’s falling off of the now-landed rock (“Do you need help?” “No. . . . I never need help”), the animals’ dreaming of the future, a not-quite-shared sunset watching experience, and a terrapin sulk about the cozy nap the other two enjoy (“I see. I see how it is. Just enough room for two”). There’s rich humor in the clipped dialogue (differentiated by font color, but in main text rather than speech bubbles and a cool gray vs. black usage that’s a world away from Elephant & Piggie) that reveals our starring turtle in a few master strokes as a stubborn reptilian Eeyore type, and the comedy of terse dialogue leans magisterially into Beckett as performed by Buster Keaton. The brilliant coup de grâce that will slay audiences is the silent arrival of a huge weird creature that looks like a pony-sized six-legged spider with an eyeball for a body, which proves to be able to zap foliage into ashes, and which plays an abrupt and hilarious role in the book’s conclusion. The art is fascinatingly cinematic in a flip-book kind of way, using the static nature of the simple scenes and repeated compositions to set off the drama of small gestures, changes of position, and eye shifts; of course, this being Klassen, all three animals sport natty headgear, ranging from bijou bowlers to a lovely little beret for the snake. The sly humor and touch of sci-fi will make this a winner for reluctant later-stage readers as well as beginning readers developing their stamina, and it’ll be a great conspiratorial co-read with adults or sibs.