It tells the story of one day in the park, told from four different perspectives.
It has won the Kurt Maschler Award in 1998.
Tropes
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: The characters are all equal in gender; three boys (Charles, the man, and Albert) and three girls (Smudge, the woman, and Victoria).
- Girls Have Cooties: Charles seems to be in his "girls are icky" phase.She was a girl - unfortunately - but I went anyway.
- Odd Name Out: Of the named characters, Smudge's name is far more out-there than Charles, Victoria, and Albert.
- Pink Girl, Blue Boy: A variation; Smudge wears red and Charles wears blue.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni:
- Smudge is the energetic red oni to Charles's soft-spoken blue oni.
- In a sense, the woman is the finicky red oni to the man's depressed blue oni.
- Switching P.O.V.: The main draw of the book is that it tells one story from four different perspectives, a posh woman, her sheltered son, a down-on-his-luck man, and his feisty daughter.
- True Blue Femininity: The posh woman wears a blue dress.
