The Giggler Treatment by Roddy Doyle - review

The Giggler Treatment by Roddy Doyle
Your Neighborhood Librarian: Dude, thanks for reading this book to me in the car.
Prosper: You're welcome.

YNL: What did you like about The Giggler Treatment?
P: I don't know. I just liked it. It was funny.
YNL: Talking seagull?
P: Yeah! That was funny, and the Gigglers, they were funny.

YNL: Anything unusual about this book?
P: Well, there was a lot of poo in it.
YNL: And that's unusual?
P: Yes!
YNL: How about the questions?
P: That was unusual. It was like someone else was reading the book.
YNL: And asking the author questions?
P: Yeah! And he was always like, "Good question!"
P: And I liked the talking biscuits, the one was like, "When you put your feet in water, when you take them back out, they are wet! Isn't that interesting?"
YNL: That was funny. Because, like...
P: It's not!

YNL: We were driving, so I didn't notice it has illustrations til now. Are they just, like, decoration, or do they tell you about what's going on?
P: They don't tell you what's going on, but you can see what people look like.

YNL: What kind of kid would you recommend The Giggler Treatment to?
P: My friend [Titan], because he really likes funny books.

YNL: Thanks, man. Can I take your picture with that book?
P: I guess.



Prosper is seven and will be entering 2nd grade in a month. He also likes funny chapter books like Sideways Stories from Wayside School and detective chapter books like Encyclopedia Brown.

I would leave this review entirely to him, except I really have to note that the entire book takes place during the time it takes a man to walk four steps toward a giant pile of wet dog crap. Plus there's quite a lot of back-chat from an imaginary reader. Altogether Joycean, Proustian, Pynchonesque - name some other authors completely inappropriate for seven year olds and slap adjectival suffixes onto them - but funny (Ok, funny-er, if you, like four other people on the planet, thought Gravity's Rainbow was really a stitch).