Bad for Them, Good for Me

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

A precocious young lad named Noah likes to see the world in opposites.
He can list all kinds of opposites, such as day and night, short and
tall, democracy and oligarchy, but his favorite kind of opposites are
things that are good and bad. For example, if his mother gets a flat
tire on the way to Noah’s appointment with the dentist, that is bad
for her but good for him. If Noah is playing cards with his parents and
his talking frog helps him win, that is bad for his parents and good for
him.

Although Noah says this is a book about opposites, it is really about
different perspectives on the same thing. If the basement floods, you
can get angry or go swimming. Noah, in other words, is not a
neo-Hegelian but a perpetual optimist who always seems to come up with
the long end of the stick.

This is a quirky little book that operates within its own set of
contradictions. The author manages to allow the reader to see Noah for
what he is—a completely self-absorbed little boy—and yet it is
impossible not to like Noah because he is just so honest about his
self-centredness. The plot is highly imaginative, with cameo appearances
by Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, and Elvis Presley. Alison Lang’s
illustrations are equally entertaining. Each panel is a world in itself,
a world that revolves around young Noah and his personal perspective on
good and bad. Highly recommended.