PriorBlog

This afternoon Hazel had me read a book to her called Hey, Al.

Here is a brief summary of the book. This janitor Al lives with a Jack Russell Terrier named Eddie in a small studio in New York City. The dog, who can talk by the way, is always on Al’s case about moving to a better place. One day, as Al is shaving, a giant bird sticks his head in Al’s bathroom window and tells him about a special place that he can take Al and Eddie too. Instead of enlisting the help of a psychaitrist, at Eddie’s insistence, Al decides to hop on to the giant bird’s back the next day. The bird takes them to a magical wonderland in the clouds, populated almost exclusively by birds. Al and Eddie are living the high-life, when one day, they realize that they are becoming birds. In an absolutely horrific sequence of events, both charachters suffer mental break downs and end up falling thousands of feet through the air into the “open sea.” Somehow, Al makes it home alive. Amazingly, maybe a little too amazingly, the talking dog shows up the next day, the two of them deciding, that in lieu of living in the clouds they will paint Al’s dingy apartment yellow. I guess this completely anticlimatic ending is somehow supposed to relieve kids, let them know that even though there are people mutating into birds up in the clouds, it’s okay, because you can always paint your room yellow.