The Great Montefiasco

by Colin Thompson, Ben Redlich (Illustrator)

The Great Montefiasco is a maladroit magician whose performances are saved by his hysterically bad tricks and his equally clumsy assistant, Betty.

Genres: Picture Books

40 pages, Hardcover

First published October 4, 2004

About the author

Since he started writing and illustrating children's books in 1990, Colin Thompson has had more than 50 books published. He has received several awards, including an Aurealis Award for the novel HOW TO LIVE FOREVER and the CBC Picture Book of the Year in 2006 for THE SHORT AND INCREDIBLY HAPPY LIFE OF RILEY. He has been shortlisted for many other awards, including the Astrid Lindgren Award - the most prestigious children's literature prize in the world.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Colin lives in Bellingen, Australia. His books with Random House Australia include HOW TO LIVE FOREVER, numerous picture books, THE FLOODS series, THE DRAGONS series, THE BIG LITTLE BOOK OF HAPPY SADNESS picture book, which has been shortlisted for the 2009 Children’s Book Council Award for Best Picture Book, and FREE TO A GOOD HOME.

Reviews

[Kim Valentine · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book is about a magician who is so bad at doing tricks that the audience laughs so hard they like him and keep coming to see his show. He is lonely and does not like people to laugh at him so he hires an assistant hoping to make his act better. The new assistant make the act even more funny and more popular but his tricks are not better. He falls in love with his assistant they get married and have triplets. I did not like the pictures in this book. The story seems plain to me. The book would be ok as part of the classroom library and it may interest others where it did not interest me. It is hard to come up with two activities for the classroom when I don't like the book. Maybe this book could be use in an art lesson to discuss distorted ways of drawing people. An activity where student review, discuss, and rate the book could be another activity for using this book. The book is recommended for ages 4 to 8. It could be considered a realistic fiction book.

Genre: Realistic Fiction
Grades: K -3

Activities:
1. Narrate Your Own Reading: show kids how you read a text by reading it aloud and interrupting yourself to explain how you grapple with it as you go. Model your own thinking process.
2. Invite a magician to class or students share any magic trick they know. Could come under social studies for different types of jobs people have.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book deserves a check-out from the library. The illustrations are different in a very interesting way, and the story ends happily but not necessarily in the way you might think (especially for how it begins). We liked it a lot!

[Beverly · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sweet story. The illustrations are interesting, featuring very distorted people with long, thin necks, bulging abdomens, and enormous noses. But still, oddly appealing.