
The Rock From the Sky” is a children’s book that concerns, at least in part, a rock. Naturally then it calls to mind other rocks: the rock in the landscape of “Waiting for Godot,” the rock Sisyphus pushes uphill each day only to see it roll down, the rock Prometheus is chained to while his liver is eaten by an eagle. You know, kid stuff.
Rocks, even in kids’ books, such as William Steig’s “Sylvester and the Magic Pebble,” bode bad things: hopelessness, stuckness, imprisonment. But in this beautiful, spare, funny book by Jon Klassen — the Caldecott Medal-winning author of “I Want My Hat Back,” “This Is Not My Hat” and “We Found a Hat” — the rock signals something different: doom. Yay.
With its muted, desolate landscapes, “The Rock From the Sky” is hilariously dark, especially about social relations. It features three main characters in five stories — a hat-wearing turtle whose favorite spot happens to be right where (unbeknown to him) a giant boulder is about to drop, a hat-wearing armadillo who’s worried about standing with the turtle in this spot and a beret-wearing snake who joins the armadillo.
These animals could fit easily into “Waiting for Godot.” They’re waiting. They’re alienated. They wear hats. And their conversation is comically flat — like “Frog and Toad” without the bonhomie. Here are the turtle and the armadillo:
“What do you think of my spot?”
“Actually I have a bad feeling about it.”
“A bad feeling?”
“Yes.”
I hope I’m not giving away too much to say that in “A Rock From the Sky” a rock does fall from the sky. Thankfully, no one is crushed. Before the rock descends, the turtle has, luckily, joined the armadillo and the snake in their safer spot. All three watch the boulder fall from a distance.
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