A Deal’s a Deal

Neatly addressing the issue of bargaining in a different way, A Deal’s a Deal has bunny friends, Simon and Ferdinand getting into ‘swapsies’ with their cars, when cheeky Ferdinand offers to swap his red car for Simon’s three other cars. Simon is not easily won over, reasoning that his three have more value than Ferdinand’s one ‘junk’ plastic car. But sneaky Ferdinand, who deftly describes his proposition as ‘my Amazing red car’ pretends to withdraw his offer, a clever bargaining tool, which only manipulates Simon into believing in the car’s worth. When the deal is done, poor Simon gets home to a less than enthusiastic brother who turns out to be right when the car breaks in two. So, using his wits, Simon figures out a way to get his cars back by tweaking his friend’s acquisitiveness with the secret contents of the car.

The best thing about this book is its handsome graphic appearance. Powerfully-coloured pages of text on the left page, balance with bold almost cartoon illustrations on the right all on a pleasingly large scale format. The repetition of colour and layout for five DPS during the negotiations of the swap, enhances the message that this all happens quickly and loudly. Thus the following purple, red and green pages underscore the changing emotions as Simon bunny realizes he’s been had.  I thought the discovery of a bogey as secret prize was as the book says, ‘yuck’, but my two-year-old nephew (whose current passion is bogeys) found it hilarious. That says it all, really.