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Sunday 4 March 2018

Review: Idle Jack

This is the humorous story of Jack. Too big to go to school, he sleeps - nearly all the time - with his eyes open and a smile on his face. He’s a young man of literally few words, and they are the only things his mother taught him. 

All the neighbours call him useless. His mother refuses to believe the bad things she is told about Jack, whose life of luxurious laziness is punctuated by one adventure after another. Even encounters with pigs, donkeys, and fierce lions are no deterrent for the lazy but lucky Jack.

Jack does nothing, but ends up with everything. Incredibly, he becomes star pupil, actually gets a job, (I won’t say for how long), and finds himself in a coffin. His life journey leads him to a most astonishing outcome.


We follow his amazing progress as the jigsaw puzzle that is Jack’s life, slowly forms a whole picture.

Through a series of incredible and ridiculously funny events, Jack remembers to adhere to his mother’s words, which, limited as they are, seem every time to be the right answers to every question he is asked. Regardless of all his apparent setbacks, Jack simply slides sleepily through life and situations, into success.

Readers will laugh their way through this funny book, suitable for confident readers.
Idle Jack is illustrated by the illustrator of Julia Donaldson’s The Gruffalo and is the fourth book in a series created in collaboration with the greatly talented illustrator, Axel Scheffler.

Title: Idle Jack
Author: Robert Leeson
Illustrator: Axel Scheffler
Publisher: Walker Books, $15.99
Publication Date: March 2018
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781406380521
For ages: 7+
Type: Junior Fiction