Amazon.com Review
"There was an old man named Wallace P. Flynn / Who lived in a house in the trees-- / You could smell him for several miles downwind / Because of his fondness for cheese." So begins silver-tongued storyteller Garrison Keillor's comical rhyming story
The Old Man Who Loved Cheese. Mr. Flynn doesn't like mild cheese--he likes the stinkiest cheese available: "Some men want fame and their name on marquees. / Some men love money.
I choose cheese," he proclaims to his frankly fed-up family. They scatter like leaves, and with his family gone, Mr. Flynn's life deteriorates as he spends more and more time at Easy Ed's Used Cheese Market. "The smell was so awful, so sour and vile / The skunks had to go and lie down for a while." It was only a matter of time before the cheese police moved in--smoking him out of his house with lemon meringue and butterscotch custard, both of which Mr. Flynn finds repulsive. In court, he finally agrees to forswear all cheese, convinced by the prospect of spending some time with his new grandson. Shortly after he is freed, he gets back together with his wife and they live happily ever after,
sans fromage. Kids who laugh at all things smelly will certainly enjoy this rollicking tale, but it's perhaps even more suitable as comic relief for families experiencing the damaging effects of one family member's really bad habit. Illustrator Anne Wilsdorf's artwork is hilarious, cartoonish, appropriately gruesome, and jam-packed with details that adults and children alike will relish. (All ages)
--Karin Snelson
From Publishers Weekly
With a whiff of limburger and a touch of Lake Wobegon, humorist Keillor (Cat, You Better Come Home) serves up the story of Wallace P. Flynn, a man so enamored of smelly cheese that he is arrested by the Cheese Brigade of the Diet Patrol for smelling up the neighborhood. When brought to trial, Flynn is saved by the family that had long since deserted him; now his son persuasively pleads, "Why devote your life to cheese/ When you can have a grandbaby on your knees?" The moral??"a person can choose/ To mend his ways and to begin/ A brand-new life,/ As Mr. Flynn did with his wife." Wilsdorf's antic and lively drawings are a perfect accompaniment to a story peopled with eccentrics who shoot butterscotch custard and sticky buns out of cannons and relatives who run off to Arkansas ("which has a Halitosis Law"). The rhymes are unexpected and clever: "Guccis" with "blue cheese," "overseas" with "jujubes," and the hero declaims, "From now on, this shall be my goal: a/ Life of zero Gorgonzola." The slapstick comedy and outlandish plot notwithstanding, the inconsistent meter and constantly changing rhyme scheme sometimes sound like a weak imitation of Dr. Seuss. Still, Keillor's fans know that a book whose hero buys his best cheese at "Easy Ed's Used Cheese Market" will, like "a nice sharp cheddar/ [make them] feel a whole lot better!" All ages.
- feel a whole lot better!" All ages. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
