Saturday, September 4, 2021

Review: Have You Seen Gordon? by Adam Jay Epstein and Ruth Chan

I'm sure more than a few of you remember the Find Waldo books, and today's review heads in a similar direction. Since I've enjoyed searching for things in pictures since my first book days, I was thrilled to get my hands on today's read.

Are you eyes ready? 


HAVE YOU SEEN GORDON?
by Adam Jay Epstein 
Illustrated by Ruth Chan
Simon and Schuster
Picture Book
32 pages
ages 4 to 8


COMING...
SEPTEMBER 28th!!!



Packed with vibrant and dizzying artwork, this hilarious story cleverly riffs on classic seek-and-find books and will have young ones laughing out loud as the narrator struggles to get the characters to play along.

Have you seen Gordon? Oh. There he is. Gordon isn’t very good at hiding, is he?

The narrator wants to play hide and seek with Gordon and the reader, but Gordon just wants to stand out. This madcap, fourth wall–breaking picture book is packed with humor and full, zany spreads with details kids will return to again and again.


GOODREADS   /    AMAZON    /    BOOK DEPOSITORY   /    B&N


MY TIDBITS

It's time to find Gordon! 

This is a search-and-find book, which offers bright and detailed illustrations with tons of looking fun. The scenes range from amusement parks to city streets, and offer all sorts of things to gaze at and find. While the first part of the book starts with simply finding Gordon (a cute, little monster-like character), it soon spreads into more.

I found it wonderful that this book grows and spices things up on the search end. While it starts with finding just Gordon in the various, packed places, it then shifts gears and has kids looking for more. Later, it ups the game again and describes different things which need to be found. This adds a bit more variety and keeps the entire thing from becoming boring. Plus, the illustrations carry lots of other surprises to keep readers coming back for more.

And there are words. Just a few short phrases introduce the pages and give beginning readers something to discover on that end...or it works to make this into a bit of a read-aloud. Plus, the ending wraps it up with warmth and a sense of friendship. This was really nice, since it made it into more than just a search book

I enjoyed reading and gazing at this one and can imagine kids will do the same...over and over again.






2 comments:

Heather N. Quinn said...

We loved the Waldo books, so the Gordon books are bound to be a hit with the grandkids.

Anonymous said...

Have you seen gordon is a cute concept, but parents should be aware that there are subtle references to potentially inappropriate content for children.

This website does a good job at pre-reading and flagging content for parents to review before putting the book in front of children:

https://screenitfirst.com/book/have-you-seen-gordon-1983131