Customer Reviews

Mr. Bounce (Mr. Men Library)

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4 star:		(1)
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This is a really cute and funny book (as all of Roger Hargreave's Mr Menand Little Miss books).
Mr Bounce's problem is not being able to do anything without bouncing. Buy the book and see how he got help! Also I enjoy reading this.

'Mr. Bounce' is either a short but entertaining picture book, or alternately a metaphor for the artist whose visionary nature makes it hard for him to fit in with the world around him. Mr. Bounce, disturbed by constant uncontrolled bouncing, goes to a doctor (representing the bourgeois rationalist mindset) who gives him a heavy pair of boots to stop him bouncing. But the boots lead to his downfall as an artist - they are so heavy that he crashes through the floorboards.

Conclusion: artists should never listen to the advice of the rationalist types who seek to restrain their spirit. It's better to bounce unpredictably than crash through the floor like a ball of lead. But better still is the artist who has learned to CONTROL his bouncing, like Goethe, and that is what Mr. Bounce should have tried to do. Sadly, he chose to listen to a two-bit doctor instead.

You may also enjoy Time Struggle 1: The Wolves of Odin (Volume 1).

Another Mr. Men book I own that I would say is one of the top 5 in the twenty or so we've bought for our son. Poor Mr. Bounce goes to town to see Dr. Makeyouwell so he would stop bouncing about quite so much. But along the way to town he becomes part of a tennis game (ow, ouch, oooowwww) and bounces off the bus, through the window, and straight into a hot cup of Dr. Makeyouwell's coffee!! Mr. Bounce is then outfitted with a pair of heavy boots but.....Mr. Bounce should have bought a better house! (Crash)

A must have for your little one's Mr. Men collection.

My son received this as a gift from a friend on her return from England. She purchased a couple of Mr. Man books for him when visiting relatives. It is clever, short, easy to read and simplistic. Now my son has a dozen Mr and Miss books due this this one book. Not all of them are as clever as this one and this one is still his favorite at the age of seven (he received them when he was four). Mostly all of these books are easily read by an "educated 5 year old".

My nephew called me to tell me how much he enjoyed the book after his mother read it to him.

Yet...he lives to tell about it. This is Mr. Bounce. He is no Mr. Tickle. He does not CRAVE social interaction. He does not demand that the small world of the Mr. Men bow down to his whims. NO, Mr. Bounce is more ... manly than that.

The vigor of his physical nature is matched by his personal resilience, he is always willing to carry on, even though he must bounce unexpectedly.

"Unexpectedly, you say? How can that be unexpected? His name is Mr. Bounce!"

I'll tell you how it is UNEXPECTED! Mr. Bounce can bounce off ANYTHING! Even unbouncable products. Nothing can contain him, yet something does! His own sense of propriety, perhaps? His own limitations that being able to break the laws of physics does not allow one to break social laws?

Mr. Bounce is the Jane Austen character we have been dreaming of for children ages 4-8.

An infant's primer in Existentialism, we find in this book a weighty treatise on the personal politics of agency and empowerment, taking ownership and authorship of one's own life.

Such is the force with which this Heideggerian hero is hurled into the world that he has not stopped bouncing since. This is Mr Bounce's facticity - the set of circumstances, both of himself and his environment, in which he finds himself as a subjectivity. That is, his ceaseless bouncing is the hand that life has dealt him, owing to his unique position in time, in history, as a conscious being in a sensory world.

The phrase above is the key to this tale - 'he finds himself as a subjectivity'. In the early stages of the story, his experience is more that of an object as he randomly bounces his way through his life, exerting next to no control. It is important to be aware, as ever with Hargreaves, that this is not merely a matter of the physical, the material. The most crucial passage of this masterwork is where Mr Bounce is beaten around like a tennis ball by two players who appear to lack any concept of his personhood. This is just as we are all to some extent shunted to and fro by the whims and vagaries of das Man, The They - the unthinking, amorphous collective abnegation of Will. Here we confront Bad Faith - inauthentic existence.

Unlike many though, perhaps due to his particularly vivid and immediate experience of this phenomenon, Mr Bounce is spurred into action. In a visit to a doctor (of philosophy?), Mr Bounce is presented with the perfect solution - a pair of heavy boots.

Acknowledging his facticity he also transcends it, through choice - the active exercise of free will. Newly grounded in the uniqueness of his being, his bouncing ceases - the emancipatory conclusion of this work is the achievement of agency, authentic being.