What is the ‘Terrible Plop’?  It was, to be frank, the title that caught my eye, but, really, the story is not about what the plop actually is, but how it can look pretty silly to run away from something you don’t understand.

Down by the lake, the rabbits are munching on ‘carrots and chocolate cake’, when they hear a ‘plop’.’  Not knowing what it is, they ’run, run, run’, infecting the other animals with blind panic who all career out of the forest.  Finally, the bear, sunning himself in a deckchair with cocktail, refuses to run, questions the ‘silly old plop’ and demands to be taken to see it.  The smallest rabbit, threatened with ‘I’ll eat you up!’ takes the bear back to the lake.  The rabbit, this time sees the ‘plop’; an apple dropping into the water.  But, the bear only hears the plop, and instantly loses his cool, taking off in fright.  In his new found wisdom, the rabbit gets to finish off the chocolate cake.

And the verdict from the kids?  My six year old read it instead of getting dressed, and pronounced it “funny”.  What bit was funny? “When the bear ran away.”  He totally got the point of the story.  The two year old enjoyed it too, particularly when the bear is threatening to eat the rabbit.  I wasn’t sure he understood what a ‘plop’ was, so it gave us an opportunity to play dropping things into the water at bath time.

I found this story really easy to read, the rhythm and timing is just perfect.  Some books with rhyming text take a few reads to get the cadence right, but with this book, I could make the story bounce along the first time I read it.  The illustrations are great, somewhat reminiscent of Dr Seuss, but with much nicer colours.  The bear put me in mind of Jungle Book’s Baloo, both in his appearance and (initial) laid-backness.  You can even learn how to draw the bear from a video on the author’s website.   I also liked that readers can see from the start what makes the plop so they can appreciate the humour.  I don’t ‘think the book is intended to have a moral message, but is just playing on the humorous situation

‘The Terrible Plop’ was published in Australia first last year, and has been well received by Australian bloggers, some of whom have made comparisons to Chicken Licken.   I found the book a little tricky to get hold of.  My local Waterstones, though helpful about tracking it down, had no plans to stock it, and so turned to Amazon.

‘The Terrible Plop’ by Ursula Dubosarsky, illustrated by Andrew Joyner, published by Egmont UK  January 2010

Popularity: 46% [?]

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