Oops!

In a distinctive oversize package and illustrated with Joëlle Jolivet’s signature retro, eye-catching style, Oops! follows a family through the streets of Paris as they try to get to the airport for their vacation. Back at their apartment, their house-sitting aunt slips on some soap, setting off a chain reaction of events that create some extreme roadblocks for the family’s trip. A movie shoot, a parade, policemen, rampaging bears, aliens, and much more collide in this remarkable new picture book adventure. The book includes a gatefold page at the end that explains in detail the train of chaos on the previous pages.

Praise for 365 Penguins
Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Award
New York Times bestseller
Publishers Weekly bestseller Seen on Martha TV Heard on NPR
 
“Pièce de résistance . . . a real treat.” —Daniel Pinkwater
 
“Integrates challenging math concepts and environmental concerns into a clever narrative . . . Units on penguins and global warming will never be the same.” —School Library Journal
 
“It’s the fun of the rapidly multiplying penguin horde that carries the book” —Chicago Tribune
 

In a distinctive oversize package and illustrated with Joëlle Jolivet’s signature retro, eye-catching style, Oops! follows a family through the streets of Paris as they try to get to the airport for their vacation. Back at their apartment, their house-sitting aunt slips on some soap, setting off a chain reaction of events that create some extreme roadblocks for the family’s trip. A movie shoot, a parade, policemen, rampaging bears, aliens, and much more collide in this remarkable new picture book adventure. The book includes a gatefold page at the end that explains in detail the train of chaos on the previous pages.

Praise for 365 Penguins
Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Award
New York Times bestseller
Publishers Weekly bestseller Seen on Martha TV Heard on NPR
 
“Pièce de résistance . . . a real treat.” —Daniel Pinkwater
 
“Integrates challenging math concepts and environmental concerns into a clever narrative . . . Units on penguins and global warming will never be the same.” —School Library Journal
 
“It’s the fun of the rapidly multiplying penguin horde that carries the book” —Chicago Tribune
 

Publishers Weekly

In this cumulative, confounding comedy, a family races to catch a plane. As the parents and two children catch a taxi outside their Paris apartment, their aunt accidentally squirts a bar of soap out the window: "Oops!" A bicyclist swerves, the taxi crashes, and a traffic jam ensues, delaying the vacationers. Soon the whole city is in an uproar--bears escape the zoo, a skateboarding elephant disrupts a motorcade--all due to the soap. Reprising the oversize format and pared-down illustrations of 365 Penguins, Fromental and Jolivet picture the events in thick patches of saturated teal, blue-violet, fuchsia, and apple green; the travelers wear orange and stay visible amid the cluttered spreads. The busy sequence exudes high anxiety, yet the chaotic crowd scenes are nearly illegible. At the conclusion, a gatefold titled "the chain of catastrophes" provides thumbnails of every spread and explains why the events took place. Without this appendix, key details (like the pink "strawberry syrup" leaking from a barge) are not communicated. Readers are likely to side with daughter Amy, who admits near the end, "I don't understand at all." Ages 4–up. (May)

Jean-Luc Fromental is the author of about thirty books, including novels, travelogues, children’s books, and comics. He also writes for film, television, and newspapers. Joëlle Jolivet is an internationally acclaimed illustrator. Publishers Weekly has called her books “vibrant . . . dazzling,” and School Library Journal said they “are as aesthetically impressive as they are informative.”