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Bruno: Some of the More Interesting Days in My Life So Far
Bruno, the cat in the checkered cap, takes life as it comes. When it's too rainy to go outside, he rustles up an inside picnic with his friends. When he meets a fish swimming in the air, he follows it. Why not! When the canary forgets how to sing and can only speak gibberish, Bruno helps out.
96 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
July 28, 2017
A comics story by Catharina Valckx and illustrated by Nicolas Hubesch for tweens—call it a picture book, call it a children’s graphic novel—translated from the French. Having just read some memoir comics, I loved the subtitle: “Some of the More Interesting Days in My Life So Far.” By which I mean it is a little ironic, and strange. A fictional kid memoir. Six stories about Bruno on a series of adventures: A Peculiar Day (Bup, a fish flies down a street, and so on), A Rainy Day, A Day When the Power Went Out (short, in the dark, not much happens), A Stupid Day, A much Less Interesting Day and An Almost Perfect Day.
Bruno has a set of other friends, including a horse named Ringo. Bruno teaches a he teaches a canary how to speak when it's forgotten how. In "An Almost Perfect Day," he and his friends just wander around and have ice cream, but then Bruno loses his hat (almost perfect). Quirky, feels pretty original, but I wanted to love these stories more, I wanted them to be a bit more surreal than they were. I also wish (as I often do) that there were fewer words so the pictures could tell more of the story. But I liked it. Maybe kids could use it to tell their own stories of bad or funny or perfect days.
Bruno has a set of other friends, including a horse named Ringo. Bruno teaches a he teaches a canary how to speak when it's forgotten how. In "An Almost Perfect Day," he and his friends just wander around and have ice cream, but then Bruno loses his hat (almost perfect). Quirky, feels pretty original, but I wanted to love these stories more, I wanted them to be a bit more surreal than they were. I also wish (as I often do) that there were fewer words so the pictures could tell more of the story. But I liked it. Maybe kids could use it to tell their own stories of bad or funny or perfect days.
February 26, 2017
Esta es una de las cosas más tiernas que leí en la vida. AMÉ las ilustraciones, porque es el tipo de arte que me gustó toda la vida, desde webtoons hasta en los libros de inglés de la primaria (me acuerdo patente del dibujo en el que enseñaba las distintas partes de la casa :')). Bruno es tiernísimo, amé a Tweety y a Bup y es un gran libro para leerte mientras esperás a que te atienda el dentista. Híper amor.
January 8, 2022
Maybe my favourite kids book I’ve read since starting my job at a childrens bookstore. Includes four stories that are a little more quiet and subtle than a lot of other stuff you’ll find in junior fiction, but it has a humour and charm that won me over immediately. Love love love.
February 7, 2017
This is a sweet, longish picture book about a anthropomorphic cat, and his friends. The whole book is a series of stories of good days, bad days, and all sorts of days in between. There are stories of fish out of water, and lost canaries. There is just a two page story of how peaceful it is when the power goes out. There is a strange story about a rainy day, when a wolf comes to call.
I think kids will enjoy reading about Bruno's strange adventures, and friends. And the wolf story ends well.
Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.
I think kids will enjoy reading about Bruno's strange adventures, and friends. And the wolf story ends well.
Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.
February 1, 2017
Perceptive, Funny, Irreverent and a Touch Surreal
To say that a book has "charm" is often a way either to damn it with faint praise or to say something nice without really saying much at all. Because I so admired this book I'll try harder to be clear. This book combines pleasant and appealing drawings of amiable and idiosyncratic characters with crystal clear, sharp, deadpan wit. It's smart, casually odd, and offered with a smile, a shrug of the shoulders, and a raised eyebrow.
The first of the six interconnected stories is titled "A Peculiar Day", and peculiar, in a good way, is exactly the right description for the entire book. It's a touch surreal and a bit bizarro, but just around the edges. In my favorite story, (the first one), Bruno runs into a fish who has somehow left the water and found himself swimming in the air. (When questioned, the fish merely sighs and responds, "I can't understand it. Something very strange is going on...") It's as though the Belgian artist Rene Magritte had decided to abandon the canvas in order to write children's books.
Bruno reminds me a bit of the unflappable heroes you encounter in books by writers like Daniel Pinkwater. Whether it's a lizard jazz band, a giant Hoboken chicken, or a hamburger diner operated by aliens, his kids just roll with the dada punches and keep on keepin' on, with a slight nod to the oddness surrounding them. Those are books, though, for older readers, and maybe one of the most appealing aspects of this book is that it is, after all, a picture book for little guys. I'm thinking that if your little reader/listener gets into this book, then you are on your way to having parented the hippest kid in the first grade.
Catharina Valckx is Dutch, raised in Paris but now living in Amsterdam. She writes in Dutch and French. The illustrator, Nicolas Hubesch, is also based in Paris. So, it seems fair to make a reference to Gallic humor - that peculiar combination of gaiety, keen perception, irreverence and joy - as a fine way to describe the effect of this work. That the book so crisply gets its surreal feel across is no doubt also due to the fine translation by Antony Shugar, who never gets mentioned in the blurbs.
Anyway, bottom line, I was very taken by this book, and very much entertained. It's smart; it's funny; it is - come on let's say it - charming. A very nice find.
(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
To say that a book has "charm" is often a way either to damn it with faint praise or to say something nice without really saying much at all. Because I so admired this book I'll try harder to be clear. This book combines pleasant and appealing drawings of amiable and idiosyncratic characters with crystal clear, sharp, deadpan wit. It's smart, casually odd, and offered with a smile, a shrug of the shoulders, and a raised eyebrow.
The first of the six interconnected stories is titled "A Peculiar Day", and peculiar, in a good way, is exactly the right description for the entire book. It's a touch surreal and a bit bizarro, but just around the edges. In my favorite story, (the first one), Bruno runs into a fish who has somehow left the water and found himself swimming in the air. (When questioned, the fish merely sighs and responds, "I can't understand it. Something very strange is going on...") It's as though the Belgian artist Rene Magritte had decided to abandon the canvas in order to write children's books.
Bruno reminds me a bit of the unflappable heroes you encounter in books by writers like Daniel Pinkwater. Whether it's a lizard jazz band, a giant Hoboken chicken, or a hamburger diner operated by aliens, his kids just roll with the dada punches and keep on keepin' on, with a slight nod to the oddness surrounding them. Those are books, though, for older readers, and maybe one of the most appealing aspects of this book is that it is, after all, a picture book for little guys. I'm thinking that if your little reader/listener gets into this book, then you are on your way to having parented the hippest kid in the first grade.
Catharina Valckx is Dutch, raised in Paris but now living in Amsterdam. She writes in Dutch and French. The illustrator, Nicolas Hubesch, is also based in Paris. So, it seems fair to make a reference to Gallic humor - that peculiar combination of gaiety, keen perception, irreverence and joy - as a fine way to describe the effect of this work. That the book so crisply gets its surreal feel across is no doubt also due to the fine translation by Antony Shugar, who never gets mentioned in the blurbs.
Anyway, bottom line, I was very taken by this book, and very much entertained. It's smart; it's funny; it is - come on let's say it - charming. A very nice find.
(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
February 6, 2017
Adorable illustrations and sweet, quirky stories. And a brilliant subtitle! I liked this a lot, and think perhaps it was only the translation that stopped me from loving it.
March 28, 2017
To be honest, I didn't enjoy this book as much as I would have liked. Bruno is a fun character with his blue cap and nice house. He has friends and some simple adventures. The first story about a peculiar day in which he meets a flying fish and his horse friend, Ringo walks backward every where was especially silly. But the story about the stupid day and some other episodes of name-calling didn't strike me as particularly good examples of how to talk about your friends. Admittedly, Bruno's friends don't always play nice and are rather selfish at moments, but still, the name-calling rubbed me the wrong way. Other than that though the book was cute. I really liked the illustrations, especially of Bruno's home, it looked nice and cozy (at least until the dreadful Gerard came to visit). And I appreciated Bruno's kindness to the rather confused canary whose statements don't make any sense whatsoever.It may also be that with this book being originally published in French, it doesn't click with my American tastes. Give this one to young readers who are ready for something a bit different than they are used to.
March 27, 2023
A delightful tale of Bruno and his friends as they live very anthropomorphic lives. Simple but lovely. I really loved the illustrations.
And I'm rather chuffed that it arrived on the doorstep this morning, and is read this afternoon.
And I'm rather chuffed that it arrived on the doorstep this morning, and is read this afternoon.
February 14, 2017
A little bit strange, but I can see kids enjoying it because of the strangeness. In format, it's somewhere between a picture book and a graphic novel; it would work well for kids transitioning into reading on their own.
Note: I received a digital review copy through NetGalley.
Note: I received a digital review copy through NetGalley.
March 23, 2017
Translated from the French, a picture book collection of short stories about the different kinds of days Bruno, a Parisian cat, has. He tells about a peculiar day when everything was strange, a very rainy day and its events, the quiet of a day when the power went out, a stupid day that had a lot of things that went badly and a few things that went well, a day so typical it’s almost boring, and Bruno’s ideas for a perfect day that go mostly according to plan.
Different types of days are things everyone can relate to, but oddly enough, I can’t remember another story collection that focused on this topic. It works quite well. Most people can relate to rainy day adventures or those days when nothing seems to go right, or the adventure it is to go without electricity when you know it’s just for a little while. Maybe your bad day didn’t involve almost getting run over by a car full of boar, but you can still relate. I think what I liked most about this book are the friendships. Bruno and his friends are good to each other, are a variety of animals, have amusing adventures, and even show you can be friends despite age difference. (One of his best friends is an elderly pony.) Bruno and his other animal friends are residents of real Paris (not the touristy Paris) so it also has a teensy bit of exotic feel to it for those of us outside of Paris, but the location doesn’t distract from the everyday feel of their adventures. You can definitely get kids to make connections between Bruno’s days and days they have experienced themselves. In that way, this would make a good read before a creative writing activity. Can they write about one of their days too? If Bruno can write about sitting in the dark or a typical day, is there any such thing as a day too boring to turn into a story? It’s a charming picture book kids should enjoy for the cartoon-like illustrations and the clever twist on the ordinary. Will recommend our elementary library acquire a copy.
I received an ARC of this title from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Different types of days are things everyone can relate to, but oddly enough, I can’t remember another story collection that focused on this topic. It works quite well. Most people can relate to rainy day adventures or those days when nothing seems to go right, or the adventure it is to go without electricity when you know it’s just for a little while. Maybe your bad day didn’t involve almost getting run over by a car full of boar, but you can still relate. I think what I liked most about this book are the friendships. Bruno and his friends are good to each other, are a variety of animals, have amusing adventures, and even show you can be friends despite age difference. (One of his best friends is an elderly pony.) Bruno and his other animal friends are residents of real Paris (not the touristy Paris) so it also has a teensy bit of exotic feel to it for those of us outside of Paris, but the location doesn’t distract from the everyday feel of their adventures. You can definitely get kids to make connections between Bruno’s days and days they have experienced themselves. In that way, this would make a good read before a creative writing activity. Can they write about one of their days too? If Bruno can write about sitting in the dark or a typical day, is there any such thing as a day too boring to turn into a story? It’s a charming picture book kids should enjoy for the cartoon-like illustrations and the clever twist on the ordinary. Will recommend our elementary library acquire a copy.
I received an ARC of this title from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
April 29, 2018
Translated from French and originally published in New Zealand, this book by award-winning author Catharina Valckx will get even the least imaginative adult--or child--laughing at Bruno and his "interesting" days. Valckx's books have been published in eleven languages and it is clear after reading Bruno , why her books have a universal appeal to children. Simply written with plenty of character dialogue and goofy instances, I could see some of my students who enjoy reading Elephant and Piggie and other Mo Willems books also liking Bruno .
Bruno the cat gives a playful account of some of his favorite days, narrating six silly stories about the small moments that make his life interesting. Along with his friends, Bruno finds the fun in each day, no matter what kind of peculiar situations he comes across.
Themes of friendship and positivity prevail in this set of stories.
This book would be very effective to use as a mentor text with students who are learning to 1) write narratives about the small moments in their lives from their perspective, 2) read and write fantasy stories where animals act like people and impossible events occur and 3) use dialogue in their writing to show characters speaking.
This international book would serve as a mirror for students living in cities in America, the United Kingdom or New Zealand for example, due to the setting of the story and the activities the characters participate in. It may serve more as more of a window to children living in rural communities or in countries where cities look and feel very different from those mentioned above.
Bruno the cat gives a playful account of some of his favorite days, narrating six silly stories about the small moments that make his life interesting. Along with his friends, Bruno finds the fun in each day, no matter what kind of peculiar situations he comes across.
Themes of friendship and positivity prevail in this set of stories.
This book would be very effective to use as a mentor text with students who are learning to 1) write narratives about the small moments in their lives from their perspective, 2) read and write fantasy stories where animals act like people and impossible events occur and 3) use dialogue in their writing to show characters speaking.
This international book would serve as a mirror for students living in cities in America, the United Kingdom or New Zealand for example, due to the setting of the story and the activities the characters participate in. It may serve more as more of a window to children living in rural communities or in countries where cities look and feel very different from those mentioned above.
March 12, 2017
Bruno, a cat in a blue cap, tells the reader about his life, where some days are good, some are bad and some are just plain weird. The setting is a European town and the characters are various animals, including: Ringo, a horse; Bup, a fish; Georgette, a turtledove; and Gloria, a cow. Like people, they go on walks and eat snacks. Like animals, they do sometime want to eat one another. Completely captivating illustrations take center stage here, the style a cross between William Steig and Richard Scarry. At 86 pages, this will appeal to readers who like a bit of quirky, funny, quiet randomness.
April 7, 2019
What an adorable book! Bruno takes life one day at a time, regaling stories when a peculiar day happens and he finds a fish floating in the air, or the time when the power went out--he makes do with what he has, and makes friends while doing so! With a beautiful color palette and sense of graphic design, Bruno makes for a fun read alongside the mimetic illustrations. It's an attention grabber, and with the various little stories within, it's sure to make a young reader feel accomplished! Great for grades 2-4.
Review cross-listed here!
Review cross-listed here!
July 27, 2017
Each story in the gorgeous picture book/comic tells the story of a day in Bruno's life - some are more interesting than others, but they are all filled with delightful, quirky things that happen to him and his animal friends. I loved the illustrations, Bruno is terribly cute with his big yellow eyes and blue cap and each picture is quite detailed. A fun book for readers of all ages who like humour that's a bit quirky and different.
July 12, 2023
Bruno is a nice cat. Artwork and stories seem juvenile Seinfeld-like in absurdity. Unnecessary complex words that do not give context clues make this less appropriate for the target age group. For example “phosphorescent” when everything on the page is drab. Also I struggle with the stupidness in “The Stupid Day.” Stupid is an insult that adults hopefully discourage children from using. Nevertheless artwork and plot and format made me continue to want to know what happens next.
January 24, 2018
Unusual format--graphic novel-esque combined with picture book and cartoon. Unusual text with quirky humor. Bruno, a cat, tells about his days--good days, bad days, so-so days. Best quote: "I thought of how days go by, like clouds, each one different." Perhaps young readers will find Bruno more interesting and entertaining than I did.
January 29, 2019
This book is probably a 3 star book, but I love the whimsical plots. This book kind of reads like life, yet is wacky and silly. I am not sure how one could teach with this book, but I think students will appreciate the simplicity and silliness within the short stories. Great for readers in the grade 2-3 range.
June 8, 2019
3.5, rounded up, since I loved the illustrations.
The prose... Not so much, lost in translation perhaps? Not the first book translated from French that I've not quite connected with. The storylines would speak to a quite young audience, but the vocabulary seemed to be aimed at an older kids, so not sure what the target audience is.
The prose... Not so much, lost in translation perhaps? Not the first book translated from French that I've not quite connected with. The storylines would speak to a quite young audience, but the vocabulary seemed to be aimed at an older kids, so not sure what the target audience is.
August 13, 2017
A translated early chapter book. Bruno is a cat who shares some of the adventures he has.
One nitpick is that the text is a little small and there isn't a lot of space between the lines of text that would be helpful for young readers.
One nitpick is that the text is a little small and there isn't a lot of space between the lines of text that would be helpful for young readers.
March 12, 2018
Are French kids and American kids that different? I don’t think so, but beyond the cute art, I would have a hard time recommending this to any kids I know. Quiet little vignettes that kind of translate to weird and boring more than charming and innocent. Too bad, I had high hopes.
June 13, 2018
“Even on the most peculiar days, certain things remain normal, I’ve noticed.”
Bruno is a cat who wants to tell you about some of his interesting days: A peculiar day, a rainy day, Stupid day, an almost perfect day, etc.
Bruno is a cat who wants to tell you about some of his interesting days: A peculiar day, a rainy day, Stupid day, an almost perfect day, etc.
May 4, 2019
I picked this up as I was intrigued by the artwork which reminded me of the Ariol books by Emmanuel Guibert and Marc Boutavant unfortunately it wasn't that good. Although I highly recommend the Ariol books.
January 2, 2020
More than a picture book but not quite a graphic novel, this was a fun read-aloud to my 5 year old grandson. We both enjoyed the juxtaposition of reality and fantasy, and the two-page story on the day the power went out really got us chuckling.
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September 15, 2020Weirdly wonderful is the best way to describe this book. It’s one we’ve read many times in my house. Its child-like way of thinking is very appealing. It’s funny and honest in a way that’s unique. Good days and bad days happen to us all. Bruno is a genius of accepting that and moving forward.
September 16, 2017
Cute and strange.
September 20, 2017
This book was weird, but I'm gonna call it good weird.
January 8, 2018
Really funny short stories, varying in length, about Bruno the cat and the different days he experiences.
January 11, 2018
Weird but I like it. Sort of reminiscent of James Marshall and Roald Dahl. I'm not sure how to categorize it: picture book/chapter book? It's like George and Martha: a series of illustrated stories.
March 1, 2018
Fun and slightly old-fashioned...kind of reminds me of Esther Averill but with more humor.
March 9, 2018
I thought this book odd, maybe I just didn't get it.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews