The Book That No One Wanted to Read

February 6, 2023
British performer Ayoade kicks off this telling with a P.G. Wodehouse epigraph, setting the tone for a jocose metafictional narrative told from a book’s point of view. An audience-directed first-person framing chapter introduces the narrator (“Oh yes./ I’m a book./ Hello”) before diving into several pages’ worth of observations regarding texts and readers (judging books by their covers, people who dog-ear pages) as well as notes about volumes’ utility (like delivery vehicles, they’re “a packed truck”). When the second chapter picks up the main narrative, it traces the second-person story of a nonspecific child (“you”) who finds The Book That No One Wanted to Read on a high library shelf and establishes telepathic communication with it. Slowly, the initially repressed Book begins to reveal deep, complex feelings, and together with the child who discovers it, begins to explore the idea of collaborating on a new storytelling project, making for an idiosyncratically charming read. Alongside diagrams, graphs, and lengthy chapter titles, whimsical cartooning from Freeman (Good Dogs on a Bad Day) visualizes humans of varying skin tones throughout. Ages 10–14.

Starred review from January 1, 2023
Grades 3-5 *Starred Review* Claiming to be the first book that has ever written itself, this titular tome delivers a series of grievances to a "bookist" reader--from "Things That Grate My Gears" ("3. People who skip to the end. If the end was meant to come sooner, it'd be called 'the middle.'") to the shocking revelation that unwanted books are murdered (which is to say "pulped," like a smoothie) and then recycled into toilet paper. At the same time, a catalog of things that make a book unwanted, like an unmemorable cover and writing so dry that even bookworms gag on it, leads to a dialogue about stories that ends with that unseen reader on the verge of assuming a new role in the relationship: writer. At, and to, that point, the literally liber-al narrator adds a final bit of useful writerly advice: to "make a point of making it fun." Ayoade certainly has, and Freeman likewise cranks up the hilarity with loosely drawn cartoon images on every spread, ranging from unappealing book (and record) covers to fancies like a library maze ("This way to 'WRITING BOOKS' and 'GETTING RICH'"), a shushing librarian erupting from a mound of toilet paper (talk about bookist), and people lining up to have ideas poured into their heads out of a dump truck. Could well leave even confirmed nonreaders tempted to turn over a new leaf.

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Starred review from January 15, 2023
Comedian and actor Ayoade explores storytelling and books themselves. Readers are quickly introduced to the premise: The narrator of this book...is the book itself. Directly addressing the audience, the narrator waxes philosophical about judging books by covers before plunging readers into a story told in second person about a child who finds "a particular Book That No One Wanted To Read" on a library shelf. Interspersed with imagined, telepathic dialogue between reader and book, this delightfully droll work casually covers everything from footnotes to story structure; information about excess unwanted books being "pulped" by publishers leads to a gag about the book not wanting to be recycled into toilet paper. The design is clean, with different fonts effectively used to maintain speaker clarity, and facts about books blend beautifully with wacky, tongue-in-cheek illustrations. The character "you" is a reader stand-in with a humorous composite depiction (and so lacks race, gender, or any other identity, though other people depicted throughout are diverse in skin tone). In many ways a spiritual successor to B.J. Novak's The Book With No Pictures (2014), the book (and Book, the character) will encourage readers to approach literature with a sense of play. Lovingly crafted metafictive silliness both experimental and engaging. (Illustrated fiction. 8-12)

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