The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip

Gappers will get your goat. Literally. If you don't brush them off and return them to the ocean, whence they arrive every day, these bright orange, many-eyed creatures will cover your goats, and the goats will stop giving milk.

In a village called Frip, goat's milk was the entire economy. Three families lived there--the Romos, the Ronsens, and a little girl named Capable and her widowed father, who wanted everything to remain the same. It didn't. One day, the Gappers, despite an average IQ of 3.7 (±.02), decided for a good reason to concentrate on Capable's goats. Oh, how the Romos and Ronsens turned their backs on the gapper-ridden Capable! Oh, how they indeed lorded it over her! What kinds of creatures are we, one wonders, when such selfishness so often springs up so spontaneously among us?  

And, given the coldness of her neighbors' shoulders, what will Capable do about her Gapper plague, as her share of the economy dries up? Literally. The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, with a brilliant story by award-ridden short-story master George Saunders and fifty-two haunting and hilarious illustrations by bestseller-plagued artist/author Lane Smith, answers that question. In doing so it tells a tale as ancient as the Bible and as modern as a memo from the Federal Reserve Board. And funnier than both--which isn't saying all that much, admittedly. You don't get to laugh and gaze in visual awe and pleasure all that often when the Golden Rule comes under such serious attack and such staunch defense as it did in Frip.

An adult story for children, a children's story for adults, an earthlings' story for aliens, an oceanside fable for the landlocked, a capitalist tool for anarchists, a fish story for loaves, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip represents the classic instant of two young geniuses colliding and colluding. The result is--what else?--an instant classic!

About the Author
George Saunders is the author of two short-story collections, Pastoralia and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, a finalist for the 1996 PEN/Heming-way Award. His work has received two National Magazine Awards and three times been included in O. Henry Awards collections. In 1999 he was chosen by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers age forty and under. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.

About the Illustrator
Lane Smith has illustrated several number-one national bestsellers, including The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!, The Stinky Cheese Man, Dr. Seuss's Hooray for Diffendoofer Day, and James and the Giant Peach. Smith has twice won The New York Times's Best Illustrated Book of the Year and in 1992 the Caldecott Honor. He is married to Molly Leach, the designer of this and many other books.