ReaditDaddy's Second Picture Book of the Week - Week Ending 15th November 2019: "Taxi Ride with Victor" by Sara Trofa and Elsa Klever (Prestel Publishing)

It's surreal, it's spacetastic, and it's quite unlike most of the picture books we see on the blog - Our Picture Book of the Week this week is "Taxi Ride with Victor" by Sara Trofa and Elsa Klever.

Victor isn't your ordinary everyday cabbie. In fact Victor is an intergalactic cab driver and has always wanted to be one, so he's living the dream.

The only problem is that space is big. Really big. In fact it's vast, and the mere act of popping to the shops requires more than just 'the knowledge' from this effervescent and well-meaning cabbie.

Sat Nav doesn't work in space either, so Victor quite often gets hopelessly lost.

As his customers request a particular destination, they quite often end up somewhere entirely different and unexpected. Though they dutifully pay up, Victor starts to worry that he's annoying everyone - until one particular cab ride ends in a destination he could never have dreamed of.

Poor Victor. Frustrated at his lack of navigation skills!

It feels like a bit of an odd 'message' at first, that failing miserably at your job could actually make people happy - but Victor's strange destinations for his customers often work to their advantge, and quite often they end up in a place that they probably should have requested all along (and yay to a book that considers libraries as an important destination!)

There's no left and right in space, you've gotta think in three dimensions, buddy!

As Victor realises that his customers actually quite like the adventure, he becomes what he always wished to be - a famous and amazing galactic cabbie!

We loved this book, it's completely weird and surreal, very different to our normal (some might say 'boring') picture book intake, with a wholly original story (why aren't there more children's books about cabbies?) and some really funky artwork too.

Sum this book up in a sentence: A strange, surreal and thoroughly brilliant book about that modern phenomenon, 'failing upwards' - but in this case for a character who's well meaning and cool rather than a bumbling idiot who ended up as Prime Minister!

"Taxi Ride with Victor" by Sara Trofa and Elsa Klever is out now, published by Prestel Publishing (kindly supplied for review).