Lost Sloth

by J. Otto Seibold

Sloth's phone rings and rings. He races across the room to answer the call, but he's a sloth, so it takes a while. The phone says he's won an afternoon shopping spree! Can the sloth get to the store in time to claim his prize? Yes, but it's going to take an impromptu zipline, a missed bus, a parkful of trees, an oblivious ice-cream vendor, a rainbow hang glider, and an out-of-control shopping cart to make it happen. As soon as the spree begins, the sloth crashes into a pillow display and falls asleep, exhausted from excitement. When he awakes, he finds himself the proud and happy owner of several fine new pillows. Mission accomplished.

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens, Animals, Fiction, Kids, Storytime

32 pages, Hardcover

First published March 12, 2013

About the author

American artist and children's book creator. With no formal art training, he was able to sneak into the art world during the "outsider art" craze of the 1990s. His book Mr. Lunch Takes a Plane Ride, published by Viking in 1993, was the first children's picture book to be created with digital media. His 1997 book Olive, the Other Reindeer led to an animated television special of the same name.

His art has been shown at Mass MOCA, Deitch Projects NYC, The Getty LA, Contemporary Jewish Museum SF, Grass Hut Portland, MOCA LA, The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts SF, Gallery Paule Anglim SF, Oakland Museum CA, Juxtapoz Gallery Detroit, and Galerie Impare in Paris. He has done freelance illustration for years including clients such as Nike, Time Warner, Girl Skateboards, Pixar, Comcast, Giant Robot, Target, TiVo, 826 Detroit, Quaker Oats, Fox Entertainment, Gnu Skateboards, Swatch, and Nordstrom.

His book Penguin Dreams was named a New York Times "Best Illustrated Book". Mr. Lunch Takes a Plane Ride won a Cuffie Award from Publisher's Weekly; Mr. Lunch won for most memorable character in a lead role. Going to the Getty won an Art Directors Club Illustration Award. Olive, the Other Reindeer was a New York Times Bestseller and the movie version was nominated for an Emmy Award.

James has three children and resides in Oakland, California.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

i freaking love j. otto seibold, and you should, too. even though a lot of his books are out of print right now (why, mr. lunch, whyyyyyy??) you can at least get this one, brand spanking new out from mcsweeney's mcmullens.

it is an absolutely charming and adorable book about a sloth who wins a shopping spree, but he only has three hours to get to the store and claim his prize! and being a sloth, he is so terribly slow!!

this is my favorite sequence, which shows how hard it is for a sloth to answer the phone, so you can understand how long it is going to take him to get across town:



aww, wookit his face!!





he is trying so hard!! and this is why sloths don't have phones, usually.

the only reason i am reviewing this now, other than the fact that i want to extol the brilliance of j. otto seibold, is that i recently came across this video on the youtubes and i couldn't even believe how horrifying they look when they are wet and they are all shrunken-skeletor with giant claws-ish.

and because i know a lot of you never watch the videos i so lovingly put in my reviews (koff, greg, koff), even though this one is really short, here is all you need to know:



ewwwww!!!! but also awwww!!!!

the only problem i have with this book is its title. the sloth is never lost; he knows just where he has to go, it's just that he might need to take a nap or two along the way. these are lost sloths:









and these sloths know right where they are:









but still - this is just a wonderful book and i am so glad to have more seibold in my life - seriously, i want you to check it out, okay? promise!

come to my blog!

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarity ensues when a slow moving sloth wins a chance at a shopping spree. He's got three hours to make it to the store, and, by golly -he's gonna try his darndest!



Kids (and many adults) will have a blast cheering for the antics of this surprising super hero.

[Ken Yuen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cute! Very colorful art!

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

The illustrations are very good--Seibold is a fine illustrator--but there's a hole in the (very simple) plot that's a bit annoying (to this adult, anyhow), a plot hole that probably won't be noticed by the kids the story is aimed at. I guess when you're dealing with a sloth that wins a shopping spree, you shouldn't hold too tightly to "verisimilitude," eh?

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adorable. I love the unique, quirky, and colorful illustrations about this sloth who wins a timed shopping spree.

[Megan (ReadingRover) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super cute book about a sloth who wins a shopping spree and has only 3 hours to get all the way across town. Really fun story and bright, bold illustrations! Great book!

[Callie Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I appreciated this book more than I could describe.

[Cheryl]

Surreal, and wrong, and totally not for me. I saw a sloth at a nature park and was lucky enough to see it when it was feeling fidgety... it was *not* slow and awkward. I should not have bothered with this after disliking the author's Olive book, but the cover looked different. Inside is at least as crazy as that fractured Santa story, though.

Rating my own. I cannot guess what children would think of it, and my inner child is hiding from the book.

[Steve H · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I were a sloth and I had an anxiety dream, this might be what it the dream was like. Our anthropomorphized sloth friend is challenged with all sorts of unslothy things to do. The only things that are missing are that he hasn't lost his keys and doesn't have an exam to take for a class he never went to.

[Roseanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh Sloth, how you crack me up! The fact that the Sloth won a shopping spree was hilarious in and of itself, and I laughed when I saw what he "chose!" Awesome :)

[Richelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is hilarious. The illustrations are awesome. They are colorful and really add to the story.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sweet and adorable book.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Loved the colorful art but the story just didn't keep my daughter interested.

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun, bright, and attention-grabbing! This is fun for storytime, but I'd go for a toddler audience. :)

[SlothDude3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love sloths and this book was really cute.

[Dahlia]

Very cute!

[Liz Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

A shopping spree??! Yay! Fun story. The illustrations remind me of the old-school Golden Book illustrations of my childhood, except brighter and funner.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

A+ for originality. A sloth gets a message on his answering machine that he has won a shopping spree, but he must make it to the store in time! Pretty exciting for a book about a sloth.

[Gloria · Rating 2 out of 5]

NB: Sought it out at the library after I happened to see it listed among the McSweeny (as publisher) options… hadn't seen a new book by Seibold in a while....]

I love J. Otto Seibold's books, particularly the Mr. Lunch series, which he wrote and illustrated before he became notorious with Olive the Other Reindeer. My family adored Mr. Lunch both for the story lines AND the drawings. (Seibold was one of the first illustrators to work digitally, building a library of parts that enabled him to populate 'scenes' so to speak in his stories…) So, I was pretty eager to read this one…


I have to say I am a bit disappointed. The story feels thin, or should I say, holey—if you read it, you'll see where, and I honestly think it could have been a point for more great craziness, but no, it is just omission instead—and the color palette feels garish. The sloth is cute (and as my son Alpha noted, trendy). It could just be that Seibold's kid(s) have aged out, and I will admit, it is hard to be inspired to the same level of brilliance when you are dealing with teenagers…

Look for the Mr. Lunch books if you are unfamiliar with Seibold's work. They are brilliant.

[Kari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coincidentally, I finished The Circle by Dave Eggers today and I happened to pick up Lost Sloth this evening for the kids at the library, which was put out by none other than Eggers own McSweeneys. The 6 & 8 year old LOVED this book, which is not surprising because one of our favorite pastimes is to coo over baby sloth videos on YouTube. I loved reading this book to the kids and the illustrations were divine. My 6-year-old son demonstrated great empathy and was on the edge of his seat over the plight of the sloth to get to the shopping spree in time despite his slow nature. Actually, now that I mention it, the kids likely totally relate to this plot if you substitute the sloth for them and the shopping spree for school in the morning.

Worth mentioning are the hallucinatory elephants in major Pantone colors, the "Occupy!" camper, and the Dia Dia de los Muertos skeleton apropos of nothing. Just because! J. Otto Seibold collected three more fans today.

[Hans · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an eye-popper. I love how it moves from the front "blue-grayscale" image that is screened directly onto the book board into the Sloth's dream on the end papers (which feature many other Seibold characters from the past twenty years), and then BAM (or rather *RING*) right into the technicolor dream world where the Sloth lives. Sloth has a rather nice house for someone who doesn't look like there is full-time work. Perhaps there is evidence of Sloth's work as a stunt-sloth. Seriously, watch for the bullet-time spinning of the flying clothes pins. There's a lot more tucked away in the background of Sloth's journey, but I enjoyed seeing an Occupy camp and a chair on top of a bookstore that looked quite similar to a colophon that many of us know and love, and of course the great pun "bed of Sloth." Quite a journey.

[Amy Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book requires a little bit of background knowledge about sloths and their habits. Just a little. Of course, since it's a McSweeney's book, it's got the quirk factor! If the story had been a little better, this would've been a five-star book for sure. I think it's hilarious, and it's got some humor for the grown-ups who read it, too. Sadly, the book's cover is designed to tatter quickly. It definitely wouldn't outlast a teething toddler gnawing on the corners. Now for the best parts: the illustrations are amazing, and they tell a story that is laugh-out-loud funny. Also, I've always wanted to win a shopping spree, so I could identify with sloth's, er, enthusiasm?

[D'Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The illustrations are amazing. The story is cute, but there is a strange gap in the plot between the ice cream cart and the hang glider. "J. Otto Seibold's Top-Secret, Official, Subscribers-Only Explanation of Exactly Sloth Manages to Get Onto That Rainbow-Colored Hang Glider Near the End" included within a letter to subscribers does fill in the gaps, but it really just made it feel like they'd forgotten to include a couple of pages. Still, the story is very cute and I will enjoy reading this to my son. Sloth love.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yep, it's J. Otto Seibold, so it's gonna be a bit surreal. Not the story so much as the illustrations (which at certain points border on creepy), although the story does require some suspension of disbelief. There's even an Occupy Movement shout-out. This is a title for his fans, for sure. Oh! And look! It's published by McSweeney's. That makes sense.

[Melanie Hetrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

We need more books about sloths! This is too darn cute!

The phone is ringing but Sloth can't get to it fast enough. But he gets a message that he's won a shopping spree. He only has 3 hours to get there! Hurry Sloth, Hurry! Will he make it?

This is fantastic for storytime. Children will love encouraging the sloth to hurry.

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I am a big fan of Seibold, and I own every book of his. This is, remarkably, the second picture book featuring a sloth that I read in a single week. Much can be made of sloths' lackadaisical lifestyle, but the colorful chaos of these spreads are an ideal contrast to it. Wacky and endearing.

[The Brothers · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sloth wins a shopping spree and must somehow make it to the store in time to claim his winnings. Unfortunately, he only have a few hours to get there and along the way he gets sidetracked, distracted, and even fall asleep. In spite of all these setbacks, he manages to make it to the store to claim his prize in a most slothful way.

Quirky, fun illustrations.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm really into sloths, so perhaps my review of this is biased (okay, it's definitely biased) but this book was ridiculous, adorable, colorful, and a ton of fun. I would be happy to share it and read it with a child -- but I'm keeping it for myself, for when I need a smile.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a random little book! Hilarious! There are little details that adults reading with kids will appreciate, like the Occupy camp in the park, and kids will love all the bright, crazy colors and the adventures of the sloth.

[Rosa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This just felt a little bit bizarre. The illustrations are bright and colorful but without a lot of background knowledge on sloth's I'm not entirely sure the story makes sense and even with the background on sloths I feel like there is stuff missing....