Monkey on the Run
Leo Timmers
Gecko Press
This wordless picture book starts with a father monkey collecting his little one from school and right away their funky motorbike is in a nose-to-tail traffic jam.
Rather than sit frustratedly in the side car, Little Monkey gets out and starts wending his own way home.
Every spread offers potential stories aplenty so this definitely is not a book to hurry through. Rather one needs to slow the pace and relish the on-the-move fire fighting scenario; Little Monkey’s cake-lifting episode from the royal ‘feastmobile’…
cake he subsequently consumes in the crow’s nest of a wheeled boat.
There follow a confrontation with a rooster; a circus-like dangling act from a very bendy drinking straw
and later on Dad monkey gets an ice-cream surprise from above.
Then our inventive traveller secures a wonderful gift box
that he presents to his mum when father and son finally reach home.
Timmers’ vehicles are veritable inventive wonders, every one; and the way in which the interaction on each spread occurs is sheer comic genius. I’m sure readers will discover new things to relish on every re-reading, of which I’m sure there will be many.