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As much as we’d like to believe that we’d take the high road when misfortunes befall our world, it’s still a fine line that we walk. If something good happens to us or someone we like, we want to think we deserved it. If something bad happens to someone we don’t like, well, maybe they had it coming.
In the little village of Frip live three families. Each family has a herd of goats—and their entire economy depends on the goats’ milk. But Frip has a problem: its goats attract gappers: bright orange, tennis-ball-sized, many-eyed creatures from the ocean. The creatures migrate to the village and jump on their goats, causing them to grow thin, stop giving milk, and keel over on their sides, mortified. The children of Frip deal with this by spending their lives brushing the gappers off the goats and returning them to the ocean, only to have them migrate back again.
One day, the gappers realize that one of the three houses is closer to the ocean than the others, so all of the gappers shorten their commute time by piling on just those goats. The little girl who lives at that house, named Capable (of course!), can’t cope with the gappers alone, but if she doesn’t do something quickly, all of her goats will be mortified. She decides to ask for help from the other two families, who have gotten off gapper-free. But how will they respond to her request, now that her family is in trouble and theirs are finally relieved of their burden?
The book jacket describes The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip as an “adult story for children; a children’s story for adults.” It’s a simple morality tale, its theme as simple as the Golden Rule, but it’s delivered with brilliance, humor, kindness, wisdom, and creativity. I easily read its 82 pages in one laugh-out-loud sitting.
Even if you don’t want to read the story, this book is worth picking up just for the hilarious goat illustrations. I read the book with a 9-year-old boy who gasped and giggled at both the storyline and the pictures, asking wonder-filled questions as only a child could as we went along. The book is written at about a 5th-grade reading level—but, trust me, an adult reader will easily be captivated by this little story.
In a world where debates continue to rage on in the political, social, and religious arenas as to what, if any, responsibility we have to our neighbors, this book nails it. But it’s also some of the best fun you can have in an hour or two. You can read it by yourself, of course, but do yourself a favor: grab the nearest kid and just wait for the smiles.
