Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem

Fed up with his continued refusal to clean his room and finish his baked peas, Billy Twitter's parents make good on their threat to buy him a blue whale. And so begins a hilariously surreal adventure, as Billy struggles to care for his new 100-foot pet, towing him around town on a skateboard, and disrupting his school and social life in the process. Punishment was never so entertaining - for the reader, that is!

Mac Barnett's unconventional narrative, which convinces the reader to accept the absurd as a matter-of-fact reality, is paired with Adam Rex's appealing illustrations. Quirky little visual details abound, from the fact that the faces of the adults are never shown, to the delivery of the whale by "Fed Up," rather than "Fed show more Ex."

Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem is the kind of book that makes me glad to read reviews. Not because I am anxious to substitute the reviewer's judgment for my own, but because I am sometimes convinced to pick up a title I may otherwise have overlooked, erroneously convinced that it "wasn't for me." How glad I am that this past weekend's New York Times Book Review led me to this delightful picture-book! show less

Billy Twitters' parents have an unusual punishment strategy for Billy: they threaten him with getting him a blue whale. They follow through on the threat, and Billy has to take his whale everywhere with him, take it for walks, play with it, and feed it krill. At last, he decides that life is easier inside the whale than out, as long as he brushes and flosses the whale's baleen, and there's so much space that his new room never looks messy!

Blatantly unrealistic (to humorous effect), this book is nevertheless filled with real facts about whales (their size, what they eat and how).

This is a pretty funny book about Billy Twitters, a boy who doesn't believe his parent's (weird) threats to "brush your teeth or we're buying you a blue whale." When a whale gets delivered to his house, he finds out first hand why it was such a dire threat. The whale doesn't do anything, per se, it's just the size of it and the impossibility of caring for it that thwarts Billy. The humor lies in seeing Billy try to wheel the whale on his skateboard, cram the whale onto a bus, gather enough sea water to feed his blue whale plankton, etc. etc. Eventually, Billy moves into his blue whale's mouth since it's so big - he can fit his whole room in there. Kind of weird ending, since, um doesn't he still have to feed the whale, wash the whale, show more etc.? Oh well.

The illustrations are full of exaggerated grotesqueries, as befitting the exaggerated humor of the subject. Some (most) of the characters are kind of ugly, but that's part of the humor, I assume. The illustrations are large format and do a good job of conveying the size of the subject; one of the funniest pictures is a classroom jumble of chairs and students with the blue whale's dour eye peeking out of the mess he's created. show less

This is a pretty cool book, but I'm afraid kids who are old enough to get it will also think they're too old for picture books. It's a little on the informational side, while also being completely wacky and unbelievable. To sum up: a great idea bound to end up in no-man's land.

Normally I just love Barnett and Rex, but I'm not loving this one as much. There's something more going on here than just an exploration of the absurd, but I'm not sure what it is... yes, I understand the references to Moby Dick, Jonah, Pinocchio, but still, there's something deeper...... but then, I don't get Kafka's Metamorphosis, either, and for some reason this reminds me of that.

Despite being told to, Billy Twitters has not cleaned up his room, brushed his teeth or finished his baked peas. His parents punishment is to buy him a blue whale to take care of. Arriving secretly one night, the next morning Billy feels something is watching him - the Whale's eye can be seen out the kitchen window and when Billy tries to leave for school it's body is blocking the front door. His mother tells him he has to take it to school as it's his responsibility to look after it. Beautiful illustrations of the quirky scenes and various whale facts make this book a treasure. I think this book will make an entertaining read-aloud for older groups of school children when they visit the library.

Sorry, but a book is either realistic or fantastic. If a blue whale can survive on land, then it can do other things normal blue whales can't. This blue whale seems to eat only whale food and be the size of a whale, but yet Billy is able to drag it around town. The book even gives facts about real blue whales. And why is being given a blue whale a punishment? There's definitely a lack of appreciation of the wonder of blue whales. The story starts out as a cautionary tale, shows Billy taking responsibility for the whale (not abandoning it when he is uninvited to a party because of it), and ends with a twist that once again shows how this it not a real blue whale. I'm not being clear in expressing my feeling that the premise doesn't work; show more but it doesn't. show less