Book 2.2: The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip

Author: George Saunders
Dates read: January 12, 2011 (20 minutes)
Pages: 84
Genre: Children’s book (or as like a children’s book as George Saunders would write)

Well, I’m painfully behind schedule with both reading and posting. But on the subject of posting, this particular entry is so painfully behind because it was actually written and queued, then tumblr ate the entry rather than publish it, so I’m rewriting now. Boo.

But about this book: It’s from McSweeney’s, and I figured it would be both entertaining and a good way to get back on track schedule-wise since this is a one sitting kind of read.

The story is about a town called Frip in which the main source of income is selling goat’s milk. Unfortunately, the town is plagued by gappers, which are small, round, multi-eyed beings that love goats, and express this love by crawling onto said goats and just sitting there, squealing ecstatically. Because the noise unsettles the goats so much that they can’t produce milk, the children of Frip must brush the gappers off the goats and throw them into the ocean, at which point the gappers begin a slow crawl out of the sea and back onto the goats, starting the whole process over again. One day, a gapper that is slightly smarter than the rest realizes one house is closer to the ocean than the others, so he convinces the gappers to all swarm that house’s goats in the interest of traveling the shortest distance. The little girl that lives in that house, Capable, is at first overwhelmed by the sudden increase in gappers on her goats. But she is also aptly named, and soon sets about solving the problem.

This book is exactly what you would expect from a McSweeney’s book for children: clever, charming, and fun for any age. I absolutely adore the idea of a creature that loves something so much it wants nothing more than to be near the object of its love, emitting a happy squeal. The illustrations by Lane Smith (The Stinky Cheese Man, James and the Giant Peach) are fantastic as well, and definitely worth close examination. This is the kind of picture book that I’d want my kids (if I ever had any) to grow up on.