The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors by Drew Daywalt

Hey, Story Seekers!

For generations, children have settled the great questions of life using three highly trained warriors.

Rock. Paper. Scissors.

Who goes first? Rock Paper Scissors.

Who gets the last cookie? Rock Paper Scissors.

Who tells Mom what happened to the lamp?

Run.

But where did these mighty warriors come from?

Drew Daywalt has answers. Sort of.

We're exploring The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors, written by Drew Daywalt and illustrated by Adam Rex.

Readit has already challenged me to seven rounds.

"You lost six."

I was gathering data.

"You picked Rock six times."

Book Breakdown

This is not a quiet little history lesson.

Daywalt treats Rock, Paper and Scissors as legendary warriors out of an ancient civilization, and the ancient civilization is your house.

Rock hails from the Kingdom of Backyard.

Paper comes from the Empire of Mom's Home Office.

Scissors lives in the Kitchen Realm, in the tiny village of Junk Drawer.

I was sold by the second one.

All three have the same problem. They're too good. Nobody can beat them, so they roam the land hunting for an opponent worthy of the fight.

Rock battles a clothespin. Not enough. Then an apricot. Also not enough.

Paper takes on the computer printer.

Scissors goes to war with a bag of frozen dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets.

Which raises a question the book never addresses: who was planning to eat those?

Eventually the three undefeated warriors find each other, and everything resolves the way every child in the room already knows it will.

Rock beats Scissors. Scissors beats Paper. Paper beats Rock.

And instead of being crushed by finally losing, they're thrilled.

At last. Somebody worth fighting.

The battle has continued ever since, wherever kids need to decide something without involving a grown-up.

For teachers and librarians: Lexile 670L · ATOS 3.9 · 848 words · AR Quiz 189198 · 0.5 points. Balzer + Bray, April 4, 2017. Forty-eight pages. Publishers Weekly lists ages 4 to 8; Kirkus stretches it to 4 to 10, and having read it I'd side with Kirkus. Goodreads Choice Award nominee, 2017.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

Here's a fact that explains a great deal about this book.

Before Drew Daywalt wrote picture books, he spent years in Hollywood writing for Disney and Universal on shows like Timon & Pumbaa and Buzz Lightyear, and his animated series The Wacky World of Tex Avery earned an Emmy nomination.

Tex Avery. That's the tell.

Avery is the man who gave us cartoon characters whose eyes launch out of their skulls. Enormous reactions, total commitment, no such thing as too big.

That's this book. It's a cartoon in print, and it should be read like one.

So give them voices. Big ones.

Rock should not sound like he's asking you to pass the ketchup. He's a warrior. Paper is a warrior. Scissors is a warrior.

The apricot is about to have a very bad afternoon.

Adam Rex understood the assignment too. He doesn't undercut the silliness by drawing everything small and cute. He goes the other way and makes the battles look enormous, with storm clouds and dramatic lighting and action-movie staging, all in service of a rock fighting a piece of fruit.

The gap between how seriously everyone behaves and what's actually happening is the entire joke.

Now here's the part I find genuinely clever.

Kids already know the ending. Paper beats Rock. Everybody in the room learned that before kindergarten.

The book isn't trying to surprise them.

It's making them wait.

You're watching three ridiculous warriors wander around looking for someone who can beat them, and the child knows exactly who each one needs to meet. That produces shouting.

Rock! You need Paper! He's in the office fighting a printer!

And there's something quietly decent buried under all the yelling.

These three aren't trying to become unbeatable. They already are, and they're miserable about it.

What they want is somebody good enough to beat them.

Winning every time turns out to be boring. Finding someone who makes you work is the whole game.

That's not a bad idea to smuggle into a book about chicken nugget warfare.

Readit's Review

I would like to challenge the dinosaur chicken nuggets.

To a battle?

"No. Lunch."

Fair.

Also Rock should have worked this out sooner. He's a rock. Paper covers rocks. Everybody knows that.

Maybe nobody in the Kingdom of Backyard told him.

"And Paper beat a PRINTER?"

Paper jam.

"THAT IS AWESOME."

You seem unusually invested in office equipment.

"Can we fight the stapler next?"

No.

"The stapler has it coming."

What Others Think

Goodreads has it at 4.33 out of 5 from 8,267 ratings and 1,443 reviews, with 82 percent at four or five stars.

Calista nails the genre: "A great mix of Fantasy and Wrestling in some ways." She read it with her nephew, who "thought this was hilarious" and "was ready to rumble by the end of the book."

Ready to rumble is the correct outcome.

The most useful review comes from a family that rates the Goodreads-nominated picture books together every year, and their spread is instructive.

Harry, 12, gave it five stars and quoted his favorite line: "Scissors versus Dinosaur-shaped Chicken Nuggets."

Hank, 11, gave it 3.6 and put his finger on the structure: he liked "how they each get to win and how the only ones that they can't beat are the legendary ones."

Lyra, 10, gave it 4.5. "Fun book with great imagination."

And Dave, the adult, gave it 3.5: "Best title and concept. Not a huge fan of the art."

That's the honest shape of it. The kids rated it higher than the grown-up, and the grown-up's objection was Adam Rex's style rather than the writing. Rex's look is deliberately overblown and a bit ugly on purpose, and it doesn't land for everyone.

Jill Pickle was blunter: "I'm surprised this book is getting so much love."

The other recurring complaint is aggression. Some readers find a book where everyone solves problems by battling to be more combative than they want. That's a reasonable thing to know about a book in which a rock beats up an apricot.

Nobody here resolves anything by talking about their feelings.

KidTime StoryTime's read-aloud, posted about a year ago, is at 954,000 views.

Belly Laugh Scale

5 out of 5: Laugh-Out-Loud Legend

This one gets the five, and I don't hand those out because somebody printed the word hilarious on the jacket.

The comedy is structural. A rock fights an apricot. Paper battles a printer. Scissors declares war on frozen dinosaur nuggets. And every one of them behaves as though the fate of civilization is at stake.

Rex makes household junk look like an action movie. Daywalt hands the reader a cast and a reason to bellow.

Then there's the participation, which is the part that earns the top score. Kids already know who beats whom. They can predict it, they can shout it, and they are correct. That's the rarest thing in a read-aloud: a book where the child is the expert in the room.

And when you close it, somebody wants to play.

Five out of five. Laugh-Out-Loud Legend.

Final Explorer Verdict

Ages 4 to 9, and it belongs with any grown-up who enjoys performing.

You have warriors, challenges, threats, defeats, triumphs and an apricot. Use what you've been given.

I'd also hand it to the kid who drifts off during quieter picture books. The premise is instantly familiar, the pages are busy, and there's always another absurd opponent coming.

If your child dislikes mock battles or rough-and-tumble play, this isn't the one. It's combat from beginning to end, even if the combatants are stationery.

But for the kid who turns a cardboard tube into a sword roughly four seconds after finding it? We've located your reader.

If books being boring is the problem in your house, this structure is one of the better ways in. I put together fifteen books for reluctant readers here.

And the bridge to my own shelf is an easy one this time. How To Make Your Sock Talk is for kids who'd rather perform a book than sit still for one. This book practically demands that the grown-up do voices and make a fool of themselves in the service of literature. Sock Talk hands that same instinct to the kid.

Readit?

"ROCK."

Paper.

"Again."

Scissors.

"ROCK."

Rock.

"Tie."

I see how the next twenty minutes are going to go.

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit