The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip Book

Young Capable is a very tired little girl from Frip, a tiny village near the sea whose children are constantly exhausted because of the gappers--gappers being bright orange, very stupid animals with a strange weakness for goats. When a gapper gets near a goat it gives off a continual high-pitched happy shriek of pleasure that makes it impossible for the goat to sleep, and the goats get skinny and stop giving milk. And in towns that survive by selling goat milk, if there's no goat milk, there's no money, and if there's no money, there's no food or housing or clothes, and so, in gapper-infested towns, since nobody likes the idea of starving naked outdoors, it is necessary at all costs to keep the gappers off the goats. In Frip, it is the responsibility of the children to rid the goats of the gappers who persistently adhere themselves to the goats. Every three hours, day or night, the children must labouriously, brush them off, put them into sacks and dump them into the sea, from where the gappers begin their journey again. This cycle continues until one day, when a gapper with more brains than any of the others realises that they'd save themselves some effort if, instead of dispersing between all the yards, they just made for the yard closest to the sea--Capable's yard. The little girl finds herself overwhelmed and in need of some help from her neighbours. This is a wonderfully surreal and imaginative tale perfectly complimented by the incredibly quirky illustrations by Lane Smith. This modern morality tale is told with affection, warmth, wit and a large amount of ironic humour which will make the reading of it as pleasurable to adults as it is to children. --Rachel EdissRead More