ALA Booklist (Tue Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2011)

The creative team behind The Savage (2008) pair up again for another work chiseled out of the raw material of hard, deep feelings of loss. Two Australian boys, Slog and the narrator, Davie, are on their way to pick up a couple of sandwiches when Slog spots a man sitting on a bench. Davie recounts the painful fashion in which Slog's dad died after losing both of his legs and how he promised his son that when he gets his legs back in heaven, "I'll walk straight out of them pearly gates . . . right back here to the lovely earth." Slog is convinced this man is his father come back, but Davie doesn't brook such illusions. Almond's understated, magic-realism-tinged story trades licks with McKean's distinctive artwork, a few pages of prose followed by a few pages of multiformat imagery that doesn't so much illustrate the proceedings as reflect and explore the depths of grief, longing, and hope swirling about a boy's last chance to say good-bye to his father. With understated and uncommon wisdom, Almond and McKean wring a bit of hope out of the toughest of emotions.

Horn Book (Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2012)

In the sixth book in this Hawaii-set series, fourth-grader Calvin is creeped out by the new kid in class: Benny Obi wears dark shades, says he knows kung fu, eats bugs, and doesn't seem afraid of sixth-grader bully Tito. This illustrated series continues to feature well-individualized characters, an uncommon and vividly described setting, and plot lines both involving and humorous.

School Library Journal (Sun May 01 00:00:00 CDT 2011)

Gr 5-8 The spring after Davie's friend Slog loses his father, the two boys encounter a man on a bench whom Slog believes to be his dad, returned from heaven. The narrative then recounts the man's illness, which included multiple amputations, and his death. Originally written as a short prose piece, Almond's story has been not so much illustrated, but framed and given visual sequences that amplify and reinforce the boy's grief. McKean combines paint, photography, and some digital manipulation to create some very tonal and evocative extensions. This technique is effective, but it also makes the collaboration more emotionally abstract than a simple story. But complexity and abstraction can also engender ambiguity, and it's difficult to say for certain how readers are supposed to feel about the doubts Davie expresses about Slog's dad's veracity, or the way that Almond mixes the mundane and the supernatural. The Savage (Candlewick, 2008), the pair's earlier collaboration, was a fairly clear-cut tale of magical realism, identity, and wish-fulfillment, but the focus on mourning here makes the resolution more difficult to pin down. There's an honesty to it, just as there is a raw, emotive honesty to McKean's illustrations, even if it's sometimes delayed until the context for them comes like a punch in Almond's next text section. This is a strangely incomplete, but fascinating work that may leave readers uncomfortable with the sudden ending. But for those who have dealt with the lack of closure that intertwines with loss, this will be a particularly resonant book. Benjamin Russell, Belmont High School, NH