AGAIN! by Emily Gravett

I take bike trips to my local library and just be surrounded by books. I’m not somebody who goes out of their way to read books, but even still there’s this magical feeling of being in a place full of knowledge and inspiration.

I gravitate towards picking up picture books with animals as the main characters. I mean, all of us growing up were told stories like that, and it beats seeing the all-too familiar human.

So, I ride my bike to the library to get some exercise and sunshine, I pull a book from the shelf and… What’s this?? There’s a hole in the back of the book!

The book cover was laminated, so it appeared to be an intentional choice by the author to have that hole in the back.

During my years as a graphic design major at West Chester University, I had a professor named Jeremy Holmes, and he loves designing unique printed children’s picture books. One of his designed books, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, was displayed in the art and design building, and I always was enamored by the old lady’s eyes. When I walk past the book, it almost looks like she's watching you. When you open the last page, her eyes close. (Spoiler: after swallowing a horse, she dies. The moral of the story after all is “Never swallow a horse.”)

There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, a classic children’s tale given a new coat of paint by Jeremy Holmes. Check it out!

Anyway, I can’t help but think of Jeremy when I see unique printed books like AGAIN! by Emily Gravett. Judging by the dragon on the cover, the little tyke must have burnt this very book from the inside. Why did it do that? I had to open the book to find out.

The pages leading to the story are very cute! It’s a sequence of events involving Cedric, the kid dragon, getting ready for bed. He plays with a doll, has milk and cookies, brushes his teeth, and takes a bath. Then at the title page, he leaves the bathtub with a towel around himself.

Then it was bedtime, and Cedric wants his mom to read him his favorite bedtime story. It was about another dragon named Cedric, who routinely bullies shy trolls and makes pies out of princesses. The story ends with the dragon saying, “TOMORROW I’LL DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN!”

The “again” part the kid must enjoy, because he bugs his mom to read the story again…and again…and again… Each time, his mother changes the story, getting more tired, hoping her kid would be tired enough to go to bed. But he gets progressively angry, yelling at his mother, and lets out his anger by shouting fire at the book—and this very book in the process.

What I find really charming throughout the book is how alive the characters in Cedric’s book are. In addition to following everything Cedric’s mom says, they go in a panic when Cedric gets mad holding the book. The fact that the characters had to leave the book through a fire exit to the back cover of this book is the icing on the cake.

Stuff like this is a big reason why print books are here to stay. The effect of Cedric’s tantrum would not have felt the same in an e-book format. The hole in the book also helps pique a browser’s curiosity as to what happened with the book—and trust me when I say you will never find a working eBook with a hole in your device.