Book Review: 'The Great Paper Caper' by Oliver Jeffers

Crime novels aren't for children, are they? Are they? Well 'The Great Paper Caper' is. As usual Oliver Jeffers matches his quirky imagery with text bursting with wry, dry humour. Someone is chopping down the trees, but who? And why? The inhabitants of the wood set out to discover the answers to their questions with amusing and heartwarming results.

If ever you wanted to introduce small children to technical legal vocabulary then this book is for you. Alibi, investigation, examined, eyewitness report, evidence, culprit... they're all in the there. And not only is the terminology introduced, the book also provides a great place to begin learning about the process of solving crimes and the following legal processes.

The book throws up some excellent discussion points around justice (Did the culprit get what he deserved? Should criminals be allowed a second chance?) and motivation (Can crime ever be justified? Should we be empathetic towards criminals? How far should you go to be the winner?) making this a useful text to read to inspire debate in the classroom. It also has an environmental focus: teachers could look further at how nature is being damaged by humans, potentially by providing linked non-fiction texts which children would be more inspired to read because of the story's context.  

'The Great Paper Caper' is a great example of how picturebooks use images to do more than illustrate a text. The illustrations have to be read and interpreted too - without them the story would be incomplete as the text alone does not give all the details. In the context of the whole story there are plenty of opportunities for teachers to do reading comprehension style activities (particularly focusing on inference skills, it is all about finding clues, after all) using just the pictures.

This is another triumph for Oliver Jeffers, and one that has stood the test of time; it was first published in 2008. Here is a book which a child can enjoy alone, with an adult, or during a variety of different school lessons, and one that's sure to raise a few smiles as well as questions.