Horn Book (Sun Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2010)

A slippery bar of soap is responsible for a traffic jam, escaped bears, and even alien visitors. Oversize pages follow a family racing through the chaos, trying to get to the airport. Fans of Fromental and Jolivet's 365 Penguins will enjoy tracking the sequence of events in the stylish illustrations; those left perplexed will welcome the appended guide to "the chain of catastrophes."

Kirkus Reviews

A mad dash through Paris to catch a plane involves a family in the most improbable adventures ever imagined. Aunt Roberta slips on the soap, their taxi driver swerves to avoid the mailman, there are huge traffic jams all around and the subway suspends service. They try bikes, running through sewers and using every available conveyance, but of course they miss the plane. Some accommodating extraterrestrials return a bar of soap, cryptically mention cause-and-effect relationships and offer their spaceship in lieu of the missed plane. The text provides no further explanation for this lunacy, and the mayhem is made even more bizarre in Jolivet's bright, busy illustrations filled with frantic energy. There are bears, bee swarms, pink water in the Seine, clowns, motorcades, parachutes, fireworks, helicopters and lots of other oddities on the oversized pages. The "chain of catastrophes" is explained on the last foldout page with a numbered key to the events (unfortunately in tiny, light-gray print). But young readers will pore over the pages, laugh out loud and just enjoy. Fun for anyone willing to surrender to the looniness. (Picture book. 5-10)

School Library Journal (Thu Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2010)

Gr 2-4 Published in the same large format and featuring the same family as 365 Penguins (Abrams, 2006), this book attempts to demonstrate the law of unintended consequences. The family's struggle to catch a flight is complicated when a bar of errant soap flies out of their apartment window and becomes the impetus for an ever-increasing and chaotic chain of disasters. As they dodge; run; and ride a subway, bus, limo, bike, and scooter in a Chaplin-esque flurry to get to the airport, there are epic disasters around them that result one from the other. Two bears that escaped from the zoo appear on each spread and form a leitmotif throughout the bedlam. The text ostensibly narrates the family's saga, ignoring the causes and results of the tumult that the art is depicting. Because so much is happening in the bold but busy graphic illustrations, it is often difficult to pinpoint exactly what the consequences are. The book provides a "chain of catastrophes" explanation with numbered thumbnails at the end but even with this prompt, it is difficult to put all the pieces together when paging back and forth. Older children might be intrigued enough to pore over this book, but the pandemonium, coupled with the oblique text, may be too puzzling for younger readers to decipher. Marge Loch-Wouters, La Crosse Public Library, WI

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

In this cumulative, confounding comedy, a family races to catch a plane. As the parents and two children catch a taxi outside their Paris apartment, their aunt accidentally squirts a bar of soap out the window: ""Oops!"" A bicyclist swerves, the taxi crashes, and a traffic jam ensues, delaying the vacationers. Soon the whole city is in an uproar%E2%80%94bears escape the zoo, a skateboarding elephant disrupts a motorcade%E2%80%94all due to the soap. Reprising the oversize format and pared-down illustrations of 365 Penguins, Fromental and Jolivet picture the events in thick patches of saturated teal, blue-violet, fuchsia, and apple green; the travelers wear orange and stay visible amid the cluttered spreads. The busy sequence exudes high anxiety, yet the chaotic crowd scenes are nearly illegible. At the conclusion, a gatefold titled ""the chain of catastrophes"" provides thumbnails of every spread and explains why the events took place. Without this appendix, key details (like the pink ""strawberry syrup"" leaking from a barge) are not communicated. Readers are likely to side with daughter Amy, who admits near the end, ""I don't understand at all."" Ages 4%E2%80%93up. (May)