Jan Paul Schutten
Is dat alles?
An excess of exaggeration in a story that’s packed with hilarity
Everything was better in the old days? No, absolutely not. Everything was so much worse back then! ‘We were so poor that we had to drink our tea out of a rolled-up newspaper!’ The famous Monty Python sketch ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ was what inspired Jan Paul Schutten to create the picture book Is That All? Together with illustrator Kees de Boer, he has elevated bragging to an art form.
Dirk’s three (yes, three!) grandpas, Albert, Cuthbert and Hubert, think their grandson should be delighted with the rickety old bicycle they’ve given him. When they were young lads, they had to make do with so much less. A bike with punctured tyres. No, a bike with wooden wheels. No, that was nothing: one of the grandpas had a bike that was just one rusty, square, wooden wheel!
Schutten and De Boer elaborate upon this fabulous idea with infectious glee. Both the story and the lavish illustrations are delightfully and hilariously over the top, as is only fitting.
