Trouble on Thunder Mountain - Hardcover

Quentin Blake is one of the best-known children's illustrators of the present day. His works include not only his own picture books but collaborations with other authors, and How Tom Beat Captain Najork and his Hired Sportsmen (winner of the Whitbread Children's Book Award) was the first of a number of books by Russell Hoban for which he has provided the illustrations. Russell Hoban was born in Pennsylvania in 1925. He went to art school before serving in World War II and was a freelance illustrator for eight years before taking up full-time writing. His many works of fiction and poetry for both adults and children have won him numerous awards. The Mouse and His Child has been hailed as one of the great classics of the twentieth century.

PreSchool-Grade 3-The thoroughly modern O'Saurus family of Thunder Mountain owns a TV and a VCR, and watch Rocky Dinosaur movies. Even so, the dark side of contemporary life catches up to them when J. M. Flatbrain of Megafright International sends them a letter saying that they have to move. His company wants to level their home in order to build "a hi-tech plastic-mountain theme park" on their mountain. How the dinosaurs prevail over Flatbrain and his robot-monsters makes for a wonderfully quirky story full of humor and drama. Blake's signature watercolors capture so much emotion with just a few sketchy lines that he makes the artwork look effortless. Hoban's writing is equally skilled. He compares manufactured entertainment to such simple pleasures as fresh air, picnics, and birds singing; he exposes the steamroller/bullying tactics of big business; and portrays an uprooted family (one can draw comparisons to anything from the Indian's displacement to wild animals forced out by suburban sprawl and shopping centers). The ideas are there for the taking but they never get in the way of the story. It is rare for a book with such serious themes to be so much fun.
Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL
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