We read this after having read Homer's Odyssey together. Yorinks draws from it heavily, referencing the Lotus Eaters as well as other tales. My daughter also felt there was a connection to the Garden of Eden story.

This is also a good follow-up to a visit to the zoo or an aviary. DD wanted to identify all of the different bird species depicted in the illustrations.

We read this after having read Homer's Odyssey together. Yorinks draws from it heavily, referencing the Lotus Eaters as well as other tales. My daughter also felt there was a connection to the Garden of Eden story.

This is also a good follow-up to a visit to the zoo or an aviary. DD wanted to identify all of the different bird species depicted in the illustrations.

There is a good lesson for young and old alike to be found in this story, "the grass is always greener on the other side". I really enjoyed this book I thought the author was very in tune to the audience in which he was writing to. This was ilistrated in the vivid color and the cheractors he chose as well to tell his story. When Al's dog is tired of their drab life he convinces Al to make a change, and for a while it seemed to be paradise, accept the longer they stayed there the more they found themselves changeing into something they didn't want to be.

I was eight years old when this book came out in 1986. Before I even knew that this book existed I used to play a great game with my fellow kidlets. Everyone got onto the bed and someone below the bed was a huge alligator named Al. The goal was to stick your head over the side of the bed and yell, "Hey, Al!", and avoid getting grabbed. When I saw the book, "Hey, Al", I was disappointed to find that there weren't any alligators involved. The similarities to my favorite game were limited, but there was one thing that was the same. That heart stopping feeling you got when you stuck your head over the side, not knowing what you'd find or when you'd get grabbed... that's the feeling you get after reading, "Hey, Al".

Al's just your normal janitor living with his dog in a one room apartment in New York. As the book says, he's, "a nice man, a quiet man, a janitor". Eddie, Al's dog and partner, is fed up with their life at the moment but there isn't much the two can do about it. One day, while Al's shaving in the bathroom, a huge blue bird sticks its head in the window. The bird promises that if Al merely comes with him he'll find a place without any worries and cares. The next day, Al and Eddie wait patiently in the bathroom and the bird arrives to fly them up up up to an island in the sky. Once there the two eat and drink and swim and sunbathe all day. It's a little paradise. But this world starts to go terribly terribly wrong when Al wakes up one day to find that both he and Eddie are turning into birds. Suddenly the honeymoon is over and the two friends must fly for their lives back to their little apartment in New York to return to normal. In the end, the two friends are a little wiser and a little happier with their lot.

Author Arthur Yorinks and illustrator Richard Egielski were great fans of the weird dream-like picture book. I don't know if you're at all familiar with their similarly peculiar and far more odd "Louis the Fish", but "Hey, Al" is written (and drawn) in very much the same vein. I was slightly disturbed by "Hey, Al" when I read it as a kid and that feeling has persisted in the eighteen years since I last looked at it. I think illustrator Egielski gives a nod to the otherworldly island paradise Al and Eddie end up in when he draws into his scene of birds welcoming the visitors a dodo with human hands and a walking stick (much as you would find in the original Tenniel drawing of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"). Somehow the combination of bright colors and an ever so slightly off narrative gives the book that otherworldly quality that made it so unique when it was first published. The range of birds available on the island (everything from ostriches and pink flamingos to penguins and puffins) help as well.

Kids will love speculating whether or not the other birds on the sunny isle were once human too. What is clear in the end, however, is the small still moral that staying true to one's self is better than all the riches in the world. The final line in the book is the undeniable statement, "Paradise lost is sometimes Heaven found". A little light philosophy for a toddler's growing mind.

"Paradise lost is sometimes heaven found" is the closing line in Hey, Al, a wonderful book that has a timeless moral for both kids and adults. Al is a janitor who is not happy with how is life is going. He lives in a room with his dog, Eddie, who is also not happy with his situation. One day a bird appears at the window promising to bring them to a better place, "no worries, no cares". Of course, something that sounds that good probably isn't.

This book is definitely an entertaining story. The pictures are colorful and very detailed. Kids will love looking at them and pointing out all the different birds and laugh at the silly transformation that Al and Eddie go through. I think they will also get the story, that what you have is usually better than what you lust for. Everyone, at some point in their life, dreams about something better. This book is a great reality check for us, giving a serious message in a kid's book.

This book had a very imaginative and fun beginning and middle. But then it just abruptly ended and was over. My 5 year old boy likes long chapter books, and then he likes short books like this to be read over and over again. He hasn't wanted to read this one again.