Everything and the Kitchen Sink: the Charm of Illogic in Stuck by Oliver Jeffers

We talked about Stuck by Oliver Jeffers during the Picture Book Intensive workshop in this year’s January residency. I looked at it again to try and figure out where its particular charm lies.

Some of it is in the deadpan voice, setting the scene so we know that Floyd has his kite stuck in a tree and can’t get it loose.

What does a kid do in this situation? That's where we get a sprinkling of wackiness. Floyd tosses a shoe into the tree (as one does, right?) and pretty soon we’re off and running full tilt into wild exaggeration, as more and more objects join the shoe and the kite.

But here is the magic moment. This is when the story flouts logic altogether and leans instead into its own illogic, with a sly aside for an adult reader.

That’s it. The kitchen sink. We’ve been forewarned. Several words in capital letters before this (e..g, “UNBELIEVABLY,” “RIDICULOUS”) alert the grownup reader to pause, to emphasize, to make room for giggles.

Then there’s this heart-stopping moment—a saw! What’s he going to do with a SAW? The illogic of the story until now provides just the tiniest glimmer of more twists to come along with an ending that spins the story right off the page.

I’ve always held that wordsmiths like me, who are not also illustrators, can learn something about the shape and momentum of a picture book story by looking closely at the work of innovative author-illustrators. This is a good one to unpack.