This is a lovely read with such fun illustrations! Children are sure to enjoy its simplicity and the way the story builds piece by piece to create a grand finale parade. I also think this book is useful to discuss dialogue and speech bubbles as a craft. Excellent!

Joining the ranks of meta picture books is "Nothing Happens in this Book" by Judy Ann Sadler and Vigg. The main character - a gently rodent-like humanoid - insists to the reader that absolutely nothing interesting will happen in this book as he moves through the pages collecting random lost items. Readers may predict a few different homes for the lost items, but when the game is revealed, each item must reunite with it's lonesome owner. Finally the parade (did you guess?) is ready to begin and the final pages are packed with excitement and happenings of all sorts. Everything happens in this book! While the plot isn't particularly unique considering the bounty of books in this genre, Vigg's illustrations set it apart. A tight color pallet and appealing texture create a contemporary picture book which seems at times to pay homage to the earliest animation styles. This is a good choice for a meta story time when paired with "This Book Just Ate My Dog!" and "The Book with No Pictures."

A cute book. It’s a similar style to There’s a Monster at the End of This Book. Very nice artwork. Don’t mean to put spoilers out there, but the really busy artwork at the end was a lot of fun and made me smile. Young kids will like this. The buildup is good. The end is no surprise, but the payoff is solid.

This book is cute... my five-year-old enjoyed it, and we both really liked the whimsical illustrations. While there have been clever "meta" picture books that I've enjoyed, I found this form of self-deprecating meta (i.e. initially telling the reader that there's no point in reading the book) somewhat off-putting. Of course, something does eventually happen and I can see how discovering the story is part of the story... but the self-referential aspect seemed overdone in this case.

(Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.)

This is a cute enough book, a sort of mystery for young kids.

The mystery is, what is going on in the book, that appears to have nothing in it, and then has bits that belong to a circus. There is a clown car, there is a baton, there are balloons, that sort of thing.

The pictures get more lively, as more items are found, and then the circus parade begins.

And that is about it. Might be fun for the very young, which is what picture books are all about, after all.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

If it was also a musical book (as in some kind of sound coming from within - a button to press for sound) then this narrative would make sense. Also, the items - all related to and used for party / circus - are too limited category-wise to engage a conversation about story making and telling.