On Tumbledown Hill

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is also the
author of The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek, and
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Hom

The author describes this book as follows: “A story in twenty-six
sentences—no more! / And every sentence is one word shorter / than the
sentence before.” The reviewer can only say that both text and
illustrations, which go together like ham and eggs, represent comic
creativity at its best.

Individual words appear in very large bold type set within individual
boxes or rectangles. The story begins with this sentence: “There are
twenty-six monsters, all much bigger than me and stronger, too, with
arms that are longer and thicker through, standing like trees on
Tumbledown Hill.” The narrator is a painter with a companion rabbit,
Bun, on a leash. The two go to Tumbledown Hill to “nibble and
scribble” till they’ve had their fill. A mob of monsters decides to
make things difficult for them, until the narrator paints them right out
of his head!

Celebrated children’s author Tim Wynne-Jones is a two-time winner of
the Governor General’s Literary Award. Dusan Petricic is an editorial
cartoonist and a wildly imaginative illustrator of children’s books.
Small children love to see adults bested by kids—or monsters. This
zany romp will de-light them. Highly recommended.