Hey, Al

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Summary: Great book for teaching values!
Review: "Paradise lost is sometimes heaven found" is the closing line in Hey, Al, a wonderful book that has a timeless moral for both kids and adults. Al is a janitor who is not happy with how is life is going. He lives in a room with his dog, Eddie, who is also not happy with his situation. One day a bird appears at the window promising to bring them to a better place, "no worries, no cares". Of course, something that sounds that good probably isn't.

This book is definitely an entertaining story. The pictures are colorful and very detailed. Kids will love looking at them and pointing out all the different birds and laugh at the silly transformation that Al and Eddie go through. I think they will also get the story, that what you have is usually better than what you lust for. Everyone, at some point in their life, dreams about something better. This book is a great reality check for us, giving a serious message in a kid's book.

Rating:
Summary: Great book for teaching values!
Review: "Paradise lost is sometimes heaven found" is the closing line in Hey, Al, a wonderful book that has a timeless moral for both kids and adults. Al is a janitor who is not happy with how is life is going. He lives in a room with his dog, Eddie, who is also not happy with his situation. One day a bird appears at the window promising to bring them to a better place, "no worries, no cares". Of course, something that sounds that good probably isn't.

This book is definitely an entertaining story. The pictures are colorful and very detailed. Kids will love looking at them and pointing out all the different birds and laugh at the silly transformation that Al and Eddie go through. I think they will also get the story, that what you have is usually better than what you lust for. Everyone, at some point in their life, dreams about something better. This book is a great reality check for us, giving a serious message in a kid's book.

Rating:
Summary: Almost Trapped in Paradise!
Review: A janitor named Al and his faithful friend, a dog named Eddie live in New York in a cramped, rather dingy apartment. They are pretty sick of it and Eddie gripes about it to Al. One day they fall into a bit of magic and escape the world that they are tired of and end up on a flying island in the air that is populated by all kinds of fantastic tropical birds. They feel like they are in paradise but, of course, they find out that paradise isn't all it's cracked up to be.
What I love about this book is the wonderful illustrations, full of bright colors and gentle humour, and the dialog that sounds just the way a janitor from the West Side of New York City might. I love the way Al and Eddie learn to make their lives better by the end of the story. What I don't particularly like is that the "moral" seems to say that you really shouldn't dream of paradise on earth because it's not okay to kick back and luxuriate and live in leisure because that's just not naural for human beings. It's just too preachy and simplistic. Why can't magic take you to paradise and it all turns out GREAT? Why do we have to feel like if we're not struggling along and doing what we've always done, then it's going to come back and haunt us eventually? I did like the way the book emphasized how precious friendship is and how lost we are without it.
This is a book for little ones and they will love the pictures and characters. They will love, as I do, the friendship between Al and Eddie. It got the 1987 Caldecott medal for Illustrations for a reason! I think it's a good book but I was bummed that Al and Eddie couldn't have their cake and eat it, too. I mean if a giant tucan can hoist you aloft to a fantasy island, why can't the fantasy be perfect?!

Rating:
Summary: Careful! You may miss what you leave behind.
Review: A short book for small children about a janitor and his dog Eddie who wish for a better life. A great bird comes and takes him to an island paradise floating in the sky. But, they soon find themselves turning into birds and they wish to return to their apartment in New York. The illustrator was Richard Egielski and the book won the 1987 Caldecott Medal for best illustrations in a book for children.

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Summary: Critical Reflection
Review: Emily Sullivan English 385.004 Dr. Michelle H. Martin February 3, 2000 Critical Reflection #1 Yorinks, Arthur. Hey Al. Illus. Richard Egielski. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986. Rigsbee, Sally. "Fantasy Places and Imaginative Belief: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Princess and the Goblin." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 8.1 (1983). Hey Al tells a story about a janitor named Al and his dog Eddie that live in a shabby, cramped apartment together. One day, they take a magical trip to paradise where they find happiness, until they begin turning into birds. Now they realize that their lives at home are not so bad and they are happy with just the two of them in their run-down apartment. The world of fantasy and imagination help Al and Eddie escape from their so-called unhappy life. Children's literature often contains fantasy that helps the reader and the characters of the book escape from real life. For instance, in Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, Max uses his imagination to avoid punishment from his mom. This is a way for him to release his anger and sail into a fantasy world where he is the boss. This is what Al and Eddie do. Al and Eddie were tired of their cramped, gloomy apartment and they needed to use their imaginations to escape. Their journey helped them to realize that life is not so bad after all and neither is their apartment. The illustrations in the story as well as the text depict this journey well. The book uses rich colors such as bright yellows and green to show the paradise that Al and Eddie fly to. Hey Al shows the birds in detail and the beautiful trees and flowers that make this land a magical place to be. The text also provides insight into imagination because Eddie, the dog, talks. Al and Eddie have conversations with each other at home and on the island. Eddie tells Al he hates their apartment and he wants to live somewhere better. Conversations such as this are often shown in works of fantasy. Many children imagine and think of worlds in which their life would be perfect and they could be the heroes. The article "Fantasy Places and Imaginative Belief: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Princess and the Goblin" stresses the need for imagination. Sally Rigsbee believes for children's minds to develop they must believe in magical things. The magical world that Al and Eddie fly to is a world that no other human has ever seen before. This is what makes it special. Al imagined it and escaped his troublesome life with his imagination. C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin suggest that fantasy places are the product of believing and this belief is what indicates imagination and spiritual vision. Hey Al is similar to these books because Al travels into a fantasy world and overcomes destructive forces with the birds. When he returns to his real life he has achieved a new stage in development and a different perspective on life like the characters in Lewis and MacDonald's books. Al was struggling in life like many characters in books do but his imagination helped him discover happiness. The illustrations and text in Hey Al both represent make believe and how fun it can be. The bright colorful pictures made me want to visit a world like the one Al and Eddie traveled to. This is an excellent example to explain to children the importance of make-believe and its impact on people's lives.

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Summary: This book is fun to read!!
Review: Hey, Al, by Arthur Yorinks and Richard Egielski, is a story about Al and Eddie, the dog, going to paradise.
Al, a nice, quiet, janitor, lived in a small but very neat apartment on the West Side of New York City with his faithful dog, Eddie. They were always struggling. Eddie hoped for a house with a backyard.
All that changed one morning when Al was startled by a huge bird said, "tommorow I will bring you to paradise." The bird offers Al and Eddie a change. The next morning, both are ready and waiting in the bathroom.the bird carries them to the paradise.
The theme of this story is that "your own home is the best place to be." Al and Eddie were much happier in their own house than in the paradise. Everyone will like this book, because it has beautiful pictures and ideas.

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Summary: Hey yourself!
Review: I was eight years old when this book came out in 1986. Before I even knew that this book existed I used to play a great game with my fellow kidlets. Everyone got onto the bed and someone below the bed was a huge alligator named Al. The goal was to stick your head over the side of the bed and yell, "Hey, Al!", and avoid getting grabbed. When I saw the book, "Hey, Al", I was disappointed to find that there weren't any alligators involved. The similarities to my favorite game were limited, but there was one thing that was the same. That heart stopping feeling you got when you stuck your head over the side, not knowing what you'd find or when you'd get grabbed... that's the feeling you get after reading, "Hey, Al".

Al's just your normal janitor living with his dog in a one room apartment in New York. As the book says, he's, "a nice man, a quiet man, a janitor". Eddie, Al's dog and partner, is fed up with their life at the moment but there isn't much the two can do about it. One day, while Al's shaving in the bathroom, a huge blue bird sticks its head in the window. The bird promises that if Al merely comes with him he'll find a place without any worries and cares. The next day, Al and Eddie wait patiently in the bathroom and the bird arrives to fly them up up up to an island in the sky. Once there the two eat and drink and swim and sunbathe all day. It's a little paradise. But this world starts to go terribly terribly wrong when Al wakes up one day to find that both he and Eddie are turning into birds. Suddenly the honeymoon is over and the two friends must fly for their lives back to their little apartment in New York to return to normal. In the end, the two friends are a little wiser and a little happier with their lot.

Author Arthur Yorinks and illustrator Richard Egielski were great fans of the weird dream-like picture book. I don't know if you're at all familiar with their similarly peculiar and far more odd "Louis the Fish", but "Hey, Al" is written (and drawn) in very much the same vein. I was slightly disturbed by "Hey, Al" when I read it as a kid and that feeling has persisted in the eighteen years since I last looked at it. I think illustrator Egielski gives a nod to the otherworldly island paradise Al and Eddie end up in when he draws into his scene of birds welcoming the visitors a dodo with human hands and a walking stick (much as you would find in the original Tenniel drawing of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"). Somehow the combination of bright colors and an ever so slightly off narrative gives the book that otherworldly quality that made it so unique when it was first published. The range of birds available on the island (everything from ostriches and pink flamingos to penguins and puffins) help as well.

Kids will love speculating whether or not the other birds on the sunny isle were once human too. What is clear in the end, however, is the small still moral that staying true to one's self is better than all the riches in the world. The final line in the book is the undeniable statement, "Paradise lost is sometimes Heaven found". A little light philosophy for a toddler's growing mind.


Rating:
Summary: Makes you yearn for the team of Egielski and Yorinks again..
Review: Rare it is that two separate indiviuals can meld words and pictures in such a way as this. Yorinks' spareness of words makes the tale fly as beautifully as the birds he writes about and Egielski draws the eye right to the heart of his illustrations by not overfilling the page. Beauty in words, beauty in pictures, a beautiful book

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Summary: This book is fun to read!!
Review: This book had a very imaginative and fun beginning and middle. But then it just abruptly ended and was over. My 5 year old boy likes long chapter books, and then he likes short books like this to be read over and over again. He hasn't wanted to read this one again.

Rating:
Summary: Not one to read over and over
Review: This book had a very imaginative and fun beginning and middle. But then it just abruptly ended and was over. My 5 year old boy likes long chapter books, and then he likes short books like this to be read over and over again. He hasn't wanted to read this one again.