Blunder of the Rogues

Tim Egan’s The Blunder of the Rogues (Houghton Mifflin) is that rarity among contemporary children’s picture books: a work of substance and importance. Unlike the flaccid majority of works being published for yound children today, it tackles no less a subject than criminality and the heedless route by which a quartet of unremarkable good guys find themselves, step by step, turning bad. From the start, adult reader and child listener alike know that we’re embarking on no ordinary sunny kiddy tale…This is doubtless the first picture book in which the reader meets the story’s protagonists in a police line-up…The pictures, droll and accomplished large watercolors, are forthrightly realistic. The text is the same.
Egan has given us an important picture book. May it find its way into as many homes, classrooms and library story hours as possible. It is a book that can change children’s lives.
Selma G. Lanes, Parents’ Choice

Egan’s already strange universe (Distant Feathers, 1998, etc.) continues to expand with this weird and terrific story of a bowling team gone wrong… As ever, Egan’s richly atmospheric artwork adds immeasurably to the story, evoking every reformed tough-guy movie ever made in plotting and narration, and just as classic.
Kirkus Reviews

-Parents’ Choice Book of The Year
-Parents’ Choice Gold Medal