2010
A tale of contrasts between a book-loving monkey and tech-savvy jackass. And don’t forget that straight-talking mouse who utters the final line, “It’s a book, Jackass.” I thought it was a goofy book not unlike The Happy Hocky Family or John, Paul, George and Ben. A book for kids like me with an offbeat sense of humor. I did not write it for classrooms and did not anticipate a small minority of teachers sitting me in the corner for the word “jackass.” (However, I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit while in that corner I was chuckling to myself.)
—Lane
You can read more about how this book came to be HERE.
And there’s a video HERE.
Over 6 months on the New York Times bestseller list
Translated into over 25 languages
A Publishers Weekly bestseller
Boston Globe, Ten Best Books of 2010
GoodReads Choice Awards winner: Favorite Picture Book
A Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book 2010
A New York Times Notable Book
★ STARRED
The final punch line . . . will lead to a fit of naughty but well-deserved laughter, and shouts of ‘Encore.’ A clever choice for readers, young and old, who love a good joke and admire the picture book’s ability to embody in 32 stills the action of the cinema.
School Library Journal
★ STARRED
Smith has the best of both worlds: his stylish drawings, sleek typography, and kid-friendly humor combine old media and new.
Publishers Weekly
Those of us for whom books are a faith in themselves — who find the notion that pixels, however ordered, could be any kind of substitute for the experience of reading in a chair with the strange thing spread open on our lap — will love this book. Though it will surely draw a laugh from kids, it will give even more pleasure to parents who have been trying to make loudly the point that Smith’s book makes softly: that the virtues of a book are independent of any bells, whistles or animation it might be made to contain. That two-page spread of the jackass simply reading is the key moment in the story, and one of the nicest sequences in recent picture books.
The moral of Smith’s book is the right one: not that screens are bad and books are good, but that what books do depends on the totality of what they are — their turning pages, their sturdy self-sufficiency, above all the way they invite a child to withdraw from this world into a world alongside ours in an activity at once mentally strenuous and physically still.
Adam Gopnik in The New York Times
Kids will enjoy feeling superior to the donkey, who's still ignorant enough to call out, "Don't worry, I'll charge it up when I'm done!" And older ones will relish the naughty punch line-Mouse pops out from under Monkey's hat to announce, "You don't have to. . . it's a book, Jackass" -which, really, is just calling it like it is.
Horn Book
Stylishly designed.
The Wall Street Journal, Summer Big Books Preview
This tongue-in-cheek picture book about reading in the digital age features the best last line ever written in the history of children’s literature.
USA Today’s Pop Candy
The refrain and pacing hit the sweet spot for preschoolers, while a Treasure Island passage reduced to AIM-speak will have middle-schoolers and adults in stitches.
Kirkus
Donkey’s gradual capitulation to the power of a real book is marked both by the hands of the clock (in a droll double-page time lapse sequence) and the angles of his ears. But it’s the mouse’s final insouciant line that garners the biggest laugh.
The Washington Post
I do love this book.
The New Yorker, Book Bench section
A clever rebuttal to today’s Kindle-Nook-iPad culture, It’s a Book is the latest from bestselling, award-winning author-illustrator Lane Smith ...One language caveat: The book’s title page identifies the donkey with a very mild epithet, which is repeated in a gentle last-page smackdown: “It’s a book, jackass.” Personally, we laughed our a$$ off—and we know a few kids who will, too.
Time Out New York Kids
A must-read for every publisher concerned about the impact of electronic publishing issues and every child who wants to enjoy more of their childhood and Lane Smith’s arch style. A devilish ending may scare a few... if it’s you? Lighten up.
“Staff Pick” by Publishers Weekly publisher George Slowik, Jr.
