The Book That No One Wanted to Read

by Richard Ayoade, Tor Freeman (Illustrator)

Overview

From actor-author-broadcaster-comedian-filmmaker Richard Ayoade comes a book narrated by . . . a book. Quirky, smart, and genre-busting, this is the saga of a book that nobody wants to read—until the day it meets YOU.

The life of a book isn’t easy, especially when people judge you by your cover (not every book can be adorned with sparkly unicorns!). And this narrator should know—it’s the book itself, and it has a lot of opinions. It gets irritated when readers bend its pages back, and it finds authors quite annoying. But it does have a story to tell. Through witty direct address and charming illustrations, readers meet a book that has never been read, with a cover the boring color of a school lunch table and pages so dry they give bookworms indigestion. But what happens when this book meets you, a curious reader? Multitalented author Richard Ayoade and award-winning illustrator Tor Freeman bring to life a hilariously subversive take on the nature of books and reading, with a heartening theme of finding the courage to tell our own stories. Readers of all ages will be delighted by the myriad bookish references and laughs on every page.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536231649
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	03/14/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	847,490
File size:	169 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

Richard Ayoade is a much-loved comedian, BAFTA-winning actor (The IT Crowd), writer, director, and TV presenter (the 2021 BAFTAS, Have I Got News for You?, Travel Man) as well as a bibliophile. He regularly appears on comedy shows, was the voice of Zero in The Mandalorian, and directed the films Submarine and The Double. He has written three books on film for adults. This is his debut children’s book.

Tor Freeman graduated from Kingston University with a BA in illustration and has worked as an illustrator, author, and comics-maker ever since. She is the illustrator and creator of many children's books and comic strips, including The Toucan Brothers, the Olive series, and Welcome to Oddleigh. She was a Sendak Fellow and received a Jonathan Cape/Observer/Comica Graphic Short Story Prize. Tor Freeman lives and works in London.

Editorial Reviews

02/06/2023

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. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

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. . . Could well leave even confirmed nonreaders tempted to turn over a new leaf.
—Booklist (starred review)

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 idiosyncratically charming read.
—Publishers Weekly

British actor, comedian, and filmmaker Richard Ayoade, known for his role in the show The IT Crowd, has whimsically highlighted how to choose and care for a book. . . . This title provides a quirky look at the quandary of getting lost in a library and forming amusing observations about bookworms. . . adorable, silly, and short. . . book lovers will feel seen.
—School Library Connection

From the Publisher

★ 2022-12-24
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)

Kirkus Reviews