the very persistent glllbrrt of palomaville

one of my faaaaaaaaavorite children's book illustrators is lane smith. one of my favorite books that he illustrated is george saunders' the very persistent gappers of frip.

in the book, the town of frip consists of three shacks by the sea inhabited by three families. the ronsens, the romos and a little girl named, capable and her father. the town of frip has been eternally plagued by gappers - orange, baseball sized, burr like things with multiple eyes - who like to attach themselves to goats and shriek happily all day and night. this does not bode well for people who make their living off of goatmilk or goatcheese.

the children of frip spend their waking hours brushing the gappers off the goats, transporting the gappers in gapper bags to a cliff, disposing of the gappers into the sea. but, the gappers (like zombies) simply walk back to the houses on the bottom of the sea to shriek goat havoc again... until one day, a very smart gapper realizes that one house is closer to the sea than the others.... capable's house.

except for people of faith kinda looking like zealots and idiots (admittedly, not too hard in some extreme cases...), i really enjoy this book - the story, the dialogue, the rhythm of the language, and most of all the lovable and hard working character of capable.

apparently, the paloma's favorite part of the whole book is the orange shreiking gappers themselves:

she drew this picture and asked me to make her a gapper whose name is glllbrrt and unlike his frip cousins is blue:


and so i did. (actually, it took me quite a while to make glllbrrt because i didn't have the right color felt or embroidery floss. and finally when i cut him out and started sewing, i kept losing his little spikes...)

:)

btw - i finally opened a teeny tiny store on etsy.com here.