Free Lunch [Hardcover]

J. Otto Seibold (Author), Vivian Walsh (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 4 and up

While helping his feathered friends, Mr. Lunch, a canine bird-chaser extraordinaire, is framed and jailed for stealing birdseed, and he must confront a dastardly elephant who deals in bad birdseed.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Mr. Lunch, the ingenuous canine protagonist of Free Lunch is a bird-chaser by trade. He relies heavily on birdseed provided by a company run by elephants. When it is taken over by an unscrupulous pachyderm, the dog and his friends are forced to find an alternative supply. As it turns out, they discover an unlimited supply of birdseed--for free--in the countryside, where it grows wild. Upset, the evil elephant has Mr. Lunch thrown in jail. Seibold and Walsh wield the story in a whimsical manner, depicting animals in all sorts of ridiculous situations. We hear Mr. Lunch has his own Web site (check out an interview with the author), and if you drop him some e-mail, he promises to respond directly. (Ages 3 to 8)

From Publishers Weekly

Seibold and Walsh specialize in street-smart art and convoluted story lines, and this addition to the Mr. Lunch series does not disappoint. Mr. Lunch, an entrepreneurial white dog, chases birds professionally. To keep the birds happy, he must order lots of birdseed from the Elephant Brand Bird Seed Company. When a bad elephant takes over the business, however, Mr. Lunch and his feathered friends seek their meals elsewhere. In fact, they get a "free lunch" from a generous bird who "live[s] in the country, surrounded by birdseed trees." This angers the birdseed magnate, who "hatche[s] an evil elephant idea" and sends Mr. Lunch to jail, thus providing another meaning for the title. In contrast to the ridiculous chain of events, Seibold and Walsh maintain a serious, logical tone; this deliberately silly approach complements Seibold's illustration style, a sort of cubism for the '90s. His computer-generated, airbrush-smooth characters resemble digital icons, but their asymmetrical quality lends them a hand-drawn warmth. The spreads are abuzz with comical details (an elephant enjoys free peanuts on an airline; the jailed Mr. Lunch receives a cake frosted with a secret message), and Seibold chooses a one-of-a-kind palette of brassy yellow, pickle green, gunmetal blue and brick red. Consider this a corporate-minded suspense-thriller for the elementary-school set. Ages 3-8.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 4 and up
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Viking Juvenile; First Edition edition (October 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670869880
• ISBN-13: 978-0670869886
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,385,720 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars illustrations from the year 2058, December 15, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Free Lunch (Hardcover)

Mr. Seibold and Ms. Walsh have that rare ability to create an entire new world, a completely foreign world that somehow you feel you're vaguely familiar with. The writing style is dead-on and tight -- never a wasted line, never a worthless word. And the illustrations are truly brilliant. And they're all done on Adobe Illustrator, which is astonishing to me, considering that mostly I associate that product with USA Today infographics . Mr. Lunch and all the other Seibold/Walsh books are gifts from some divine probably Japanese artistic entity, likely the same one who gave us Parappa the Rapper, toy robots, and Pizzicato Five.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy two of this book!, March 5, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Free Lunch (Hardcover)

This book is one of those children's books you can't quite bring yourself to give to a child. The illustrations are stylishly witty, the paper high-quality, the binding and cover excellent. Even the "flap notes" are a joy to read. To top it all off, the story is my favorite from this team so far

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mr. Lunch's Wild Ride!, June 9, 2006

By 

M. Allen Greenbaum (California) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Free Lunch (Hardcover)

Just in case you're new to this whacked-out series, the San Francisco-based team of Seibold and Walsh open with a few relevant facts in a opening page right out of Disney's Toon Town, or Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland." (The page, like much of the book features about a dozen flat colors, optical effects, and a font called "arbitrary bold." Here's the opener:

MR. LUNCH WAS VERY GOOD AT CHASING BIRDS* IN FACT HE WAS A PROFESSIONAL* our story begins..."

And it never lets up. It's very much like a theme park ride, if the designer let go of most conventions, indulged in a sort of minimalist cubism/punk aesthetic (mixed with a little Dr. Seuss and some genetically-altered styrofoam), and had the free-wheeling command of a Jack Kerouac.

This artistic garbage (and I say that with affection) isn't easy, it only looks like it. It mixes so many artistic styles that it's like taking a computer-speeded one-minute tour of an entire modern art museum. The trick is that the pictorial and narrative elements are just familiar enough that kids and adults can follow it. I think it's humorous, unconventional, and energizing, but others will hate it. Know your kid.

Here's the plot, which is really kinda secondary. When he's not playfully chasing his bird friends, our hero, Mr. Lunch, sells birdseed. The seed supplier, however, is under new management; namely, an elephant who looks like the product of twisted evolution: He dresses like a poorly dressed cowboy, stands on two feet, and his trunk looks like one of those long Roman horns announcing that Spartacus has entered the building. When Mr. Lunch discovers that the new seed packets actually contain rocks, he and bird friends Ambrose and Gunhild investigate. However, the evil elephant manages to get Mr. Lunch arrested on a hastily constructed leash law, knowing that he'll languish in jail because the judge--a nocturnal owl-- will never be awake to hear his plea!

The story has a spellbinding cadence, mixing long and short sentences, and delivering offbeat lines a la Daniel Pinkwater: with a totally straight face. For example, when Ambrose asks a chef to hide a little something inside a cake to help Mr. Lunch escape, the squid-ish looking chef replies "no-no, that would be breaking the baker's code." Waiting for his rescue, Lunch gazes out of a single window and sees all sorts of cloudy shapes, including a bear holding a camcorder.

WARNING, SPOILER AHEAD: The birds sneak in an escape map, however, leading Mr. Lunch to a cave containing rubies and the FORMER elephant owner of the birdseed company. Our friends escape, the real elephant owner makes a hat out of a broken umbrella, the bad elephant is arrested (though he's pictured calling out "I'M SORRY!"), MR. Lunch returns to chasing his bird friends, and...

I found a fold-up piece of paper in the middle of the book, obviously written by a kid, that says the following:

"A Bookmark to know where you are in the book." (flip it over):
"I LOVE Reading!!!"

Now I could tell you that this book is goofy and smart, iconoclastic and clever--a twisty, pop art, five-flavored ice cream of a book--but I don't think anything I said could be a stronger endorsement than what that kid wrote and left for some other Mr. Lunch reader.