Book Review: This Moose Belongs To Me By Oliver Jeffers

Welcome to 2013! Let’s start out the new year with a book that came out just a few short months ago in 2012, This Moose Belongs to Me by Oliver Jeffers.

Keeping to his regular brilliance, Jeffers provides a comical story about a pet that perhaps really wasn’t.

In this tale, we are given a boy named Wilfred and a moose he “owns” and names Marcel. Some of the time, Marcel is obedient and keeps to Wilfred’s rules of how to be a good pet.

But unfortunately, that wasn’t always the case. And adding to insult to injury, one day on their walk, they stumble upon someone who claims Marcel as their own and with another name! Hurt by Marcel’s apparent indifference, Wilfred storms off and finds himself in a horrid and humiliated predicament.

This book is all kinds of funny. Sparse and clever text combined with Jeffers’ marvelous characters and some stunning landscapes. An intense perusal of the copyright page of the book revealed that said landscapes are reprints of Serbian painter Alexander Dzigurski. Leave it to Oliver Jeffers to create something so unique and downright hilarious. The textures of the landscapes are gorgeously reproduced and add a grounding depth to Jeffers’ art. Oh how I love the simplicity of Jeffers’ characters’ expressions!

This book is of course getting many reviews considering the immense and continually growing popularity of its Northern Ireland creator. Lots of readers are struck by its (and the book jacket’s) apparent question about whether we actually own anything at all. Perhaps that was the intention or maybe it is just a fun story about a boy and “his” moose. Either way, I love this book. And my most favorite review of the book yet has come from 4 year old Isobel on The Guardian, “He’s just himself. He doesn’t belong to anybody.”