The Fan Brothers did it again!

"Half mouse and half elephant", that's a good description of Barnabus' looks
He's the main character of the last one of the Fan brothers' children's books

Eric and Terry worked together again, but this time with brother Devin at their side
With an interesting story and beautiful pictures they take you along on a magical ride

Imagine a store where children can buy 'Perfect Pets'

Those genetically engineered 'perfect' creatures are made in a secret lab under the store.
One of the rooms contains the Failed Projects. Creatures who aren't perfect enough to make it to the store are kept there in tiny bell jars.
Barnabus, half mouse and half elephant, is one of them. Dreaming of seeing the outside world, he's planning an escape with the help of the other Failed Projects.
Will they succeed in their attempt?
Find out in this wonderfully illustrated book for young and old!

Dreamlike pictures create a feeling of wonder

When you look at all the different little pet creatures, you can clearly see that the talented Fan brothers dispose about a lot of creativity and imagination.
Only the humans - who play a rather small part in this story - are depicted rather dull in comparison to them.

Those who're attentive to the pictures, will see that there's also a reference to The Night Gardener. Not only is this a nice touch for the readers of the Fan brothers' first book, but it shows the brothers' eye for detail as well.

To have an idea of the drawing style in this book, you can take a sneak peek here!

Interesting themes make a good story

There are several themes discussed: perfectness, being happy with how you are, working together, …
It's definitely an interesting book to talk about with children and to make them think about those things.
The end, however not bad, is a bit less dreamlike than the rest of the book and may therefore feel a bit out of tone to some people. But on the other hand, it goes well with the real life issues that are being raised.

The Fan Brothers

Eric Fan and his brother Terry Fan debuted with the widely acclaimed picture book The Night Gardener.
Actually they're working very complementary. If you want to know how they do that, just look at this Youtube-movie. It'll only take 2 minutes of your time.
In this Thank you-video (2 minutes), where they accept the Minnesota Youth Reading Award 2018, you can hear how they came up with the idea of The Night Gardener. The statement that struck me the most and that's also applicable to The Barnabus Project is: "When Terry and I were both kids, we collected comic books and we loved superheroes. But as we got older we realized that the real superheroes in life are just ordinary people doing amazing things and things to make the world a better place. Things both big and small."

Although there are not so many online interviews with those two Fan Brothers (note that for The Barnabus Project they were joined by their brother Devin), the following ones contain interesting background information about their Asian family roots, the different places were they lived (Illinois, Hawaii, now based in Toronto), their sources of inspiration, … :

• Mile High Reading
• Marmalade Books
• BookPage
• Publishers Weekly

To see which other beautiful books they created, you can always go to the website of the Fan Brothers.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Frances Lincoln Children's Books for providing a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.