Most of the Better Natural Things in the World

by Dave Eggers, Angel Chang (Illustrator)

Overview

A tiger carries a dining room chair on her back. But why? Where is she going? With just one word per page, in lush, color-rich landscapes, we learn about the features that make up our world: an archipelago, a dune, an isthmus, a lagoon. Across them all, the tiger roams. This enigmatic investigation of our world's most beautiful places from bestselling author Dave Eggers is beautifully illustrated by debut artist Angel Chang.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781452166957
Publisher:	Chronicle Books LLC
Publication date:	11/05/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	52
File size:	9 MB
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is also the founder of McSweeney's, the cofounder of the youth writing organization 826 Valencia, and the founder of ScholarMatch.
Angel Chang is an artist who lives in Taiwan. This is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

09/09/2019

Mixed-media, digitally rendered landscapes in jewelbox colors tell the story of a silent, solitary journey. The tale opens on a bleak expanse of land, a wooden chair inexplicably placed in the foreground, a magenta cord draped around it: steppe, the handwritten label reads. A page turn reveals a white tiger wearing a purple kerchief, the chair tied to its back, tiptoeing gingerly across stones in a stream between two sheer rock walls: gorge, it’s labeled. Where is the tiger going—and what is the chair for? A white bird sometimes flies above the tiger, a friendly companion. In the spreads that follow, the tiger hikes, climbs, swims, and rows through magnificent stretches of wilderness labeled with geographical descriptors usually relegated to textbooks. The tiger journeys from atoll to alpine lake to the badlands, stopping to gaze at the northern lights before it arrives at its destination—a spot whose name sounds just like the feline’s own. Eggers (What Can a Citizen Do?) and newcomer Chang imagine a wild world emptied of humans, their buildings, their vehicles, and their trash—landscapes that make the tiger’s expedition gloriously free and startlingly beautiful. Ages 5–8. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"Eggers (What Can a Citizen Do?) and newcomer Chang imagine a wild world emptied of humans, their buildings, their vehicles, and their trash-landscapes that make [a] tiger's expedition gloriously free and startlingly beautiful."-Publishers Weekly
"Eggers (What Can a Citizen Do?) and newcomer Chang imagine a wild world emptied of humans, their buildings, their vehicles, and their trash-landscapes that make [a] tiger's expedition gloriously free and startlingly beautiful." — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

11/01/2019

PreS-Gr 3—A white tiger transports a yellow dining room chair on a fantastic voyage across varied landscapes. Each spread features a single topographic designation. The tiger swims, climbs, hikes, rows, and meanders his way across a tundra, estuary, atoll, cloud forest, and more. Occasionally, the tiger interacts with other animals such as bears in the foothills. A white bird and a brown mouse appear on many pages, which will intrigue sharp-eyed viewers. In fact, the illustrations, richly colored and consistently arresting, offer a visual feast. The four-page foldout, aptly dubbed "vista," allows readers to share the tiger's contemplation of a brilliant sunset. The journey's end seems almost an anticlimax after the fabulous trip. Eggers supplies cursory definitions of terms in a glossary at the end. Some brief entries provide examples of countries or continents where the geographical feature is found. Others mention representative plants or animals or describe physical features. VERDICT The wonderful illustrations will excite viewers about the natural world but libraries will want to have nonfiction titles on hand to satisfy childrens' curiosity about the geographic features depicted.—Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State University Library, Mankato

School Library Journal

★ 2019-09-15
An artistic envisioning of a list poem, of sorts, about place.

With the exception of two double-page spreads reading "CLOUD FOREST" and "ALPINE LAKE," Eggers' text consists of single words on successive spreads, each one naming a geographic feature. Chang's lush illustrations place a white, bipedal tiger in each setting, a yellow chair lashed to its back as it travels left to right with the page turns. There's a dreamlike quality to the scenes as the intrepid tiger traverses, among other places, a gorge, a fjord, an atoll, an estuary, and a lagoon. At the center of the book, a dramatic double-gatefold spread presents (what else?) a "VISTA." But where is the tiger going? And what is the chair's purpose? Readers' interest will be sustained by these looming questions and by deft shifts of visual perspective offered in the illustrations. The reward is an instance of clever wordplay in a concluding spread that shows the tiger arriving at a "TAIGA" (which, along with the other geographic terms, is defined in a backmatter glossary). Amid this "swampy forest...found in the northern parts of the globe," a tiger family sits around a table set for a meal, with an empty place awaiting the tiger who's traveled so far.

Repeated perusals will have readers proclaiming it's grrrrr-eat. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews