posted on 17 May 2020

Oops! by Jean-Luc Fromental and Joëlle Jolivet

Translated from the French in 2010 by Thomas Connors, this striking picture book can’t really be missed. For a start it’s big – a touch bigger than A3 (but I’m not sure what the printers term is for something that size) – and it’s a riot of colour. The book is the result of a partnership between author and illustrator that produced a previous, successful picture book – 365 Penguins – that was also translated and sold well in the US and the UK. Fromental is the author of over thirty books, graphic novels and comics for all ages and Jolivet who, who provided the art work, has built a solid reputation in France for her illustrative portfolio.

Oops! is the story of a family’s harum-scarum dash across Paris to catch a plane for their holiday trip to Djerba, Tunisia. This turns out to be the source of extraordinary and improbable mishaps, accidents, coincidences. From the very beginning when Aunt Roberta slips on the soap, they are on the back foot. They pile into a taxi but the driver swerves to avoid the mailman and the resulting huge traffic jams all around and the subway suspends service.

They try to swap to bikes but end up blundering into a music video shoot, get offered a lift in a pink Cadillac that also crashes, find themselves running through sewers and trying to use any mode of transport they can as they refuse to give up on catching their plane.

But despite their best efforts they just don’t get there on time and are forced to return home – but, oddly, there’s another twist of fate awaiting them. Sitting in their living room with the aunt who slipped on the bar of soap are a group of extraterrestrials  who have come to return the bar of soap that started this whole affair. Rather gnomically they tell the family:

“No matter where you go in the universe, it’s always the same thing…Every cause has its effect, and every effect has its cause.”

Offering them a lift in their flying saucer, the family finally make it to their beach holiday.

Of course, the story is hugely enhanced by Jolivet’s attractive and detail-filled illustrations that capture the frantic race across town perfectly. Children will especially like following the parade of bears, bee swarms, pink water in the Seine, clowns, motorcades, parachutes, fireworks and, of course, the alien visitors.

There is a little bonus at the end with a fold-out of the “chain of catastrophes” that the book has taken us through.

It’s a book that will keep the young reader engaged for hours as they go through the book’s details, page by page, and then start all over again to find what they’ve missed.

You can get this in hardcover on the second hand market for well under £10.

 

Terry Potter

May 2020

(Click on any image below to view them in a slide show format)