Review: A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever

A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever by Marla Frazee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is the first picturebook in the recent binge that has contradictory or 'counterpoint' illustrations! What a find. Especially refreshing because Marla Frazee wrote it AND illustrated it (it's a whole other thing if the counterpoint is done by the illustrator to an author). She undoes her own words with her own pictures, and it's on purpose! The utter lack of a lesson was beautiful. It was like the best day ever, right to the last night when they tried to squeeze just a little more out of it. I was so expecting the boys to just sit quietly and enjoy the sunset with their heads propped together on the deck, but then they dug in just like a couple of kids would and did more! As the four stars indicate, I "really liked it." I would love to do a read-aloud with this one.

I think Marla Frazee is one of a few illustrators whose work harks to the old cartoons like Herriman, or to the draftsman tradition in magazine illustration in the 1940s and 1950s. She is not far from Patrick McDonnell and has points of agreement with William Joyce. But she is her own artist. I really appreciate the hand-lettering (and she makes little jokes with it!). She is the graphic designer--I mean I'm sure her editor had someone work on the book from the department, but Frazee is the designer.



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