The Books
McFig and McFly: A Tale of Jealousy, Revenge, and Death (with a Happy Ending)
Hardcover, 40 pages
Published by Candlewick (2008-05-27)
List Price: $17.99
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Amazon Description
From the unparalleled Henrik Drescher comes a wickedly funny story about the perils of runaway rivalry (with a happy ending).McFig lives with his daughter, Rosie, in a lovely little cottage far away from anywhere big and important. One day, McFly and his son, Anton, buy the land next door. At first McFig and McFly hit it off big-time and build McFly a cottage modeled exactly after McFig’s house. But then the two start to add things onto their houses — a medieval tower, a second-story playroom — and soon McFig and McFly are in a lifelong competition to be bigger and better than each other. Where will all their obsessive one-upmanship end?
One Potato Review
The daredevil writer and illustrator (of Hubert the Pudge, a Vegetarian Tale among other oddities) tells the story of neighboring Scotsmen caught up in a very grown-up (and foretellingly ruinous) game of architecture. The buildings themselves (complete with bungee-jumping platforms and fishbone-and-garbage-can weather vanes) are hypnotic to look at, and their builders, though tragically deluded, come off as otherwise decent and sympathetic: two guys who got carried away. Folktales can feel kind of skeletal sometimes for all of their timelessness. This reads like a classic, living and breathing and funny, as entertaining as it is wise.
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