Rita is bored. So unbelievably bored she can’t do anything. She can’t read, draw, or even think. She’s bored and everything around her is boring. She tries all sorts of tricks such as jumping about and making strange noise but everything bored her. Then she made herself breathless and dizzy singing out, ‘I’m boooored’ so much so that she had to lie still.
She began to wonder how many other bored people there were in the world and slowly her imagination takes over and she drifts off into a daydream where all the bored people board a bus, and all their bored yawns cause them to swell up like balloons and they float away. The yawns leak out and they sink onto an island – Bored Island and amazingly they start to find things to do. One woman does sculpture; another group forms a band and another, a professor from Cairo, discovers three new galaxies while playing I Spy. There are new things found by others and Rita. When she is called for dinner, she yells back that she is far too busy!
Starting with the prone and listless shape of Rita on the book’s cove, the artwork throughout depicts Rita’s bored state of mind perfectly. The use of different perspectives, layouts and fonts cleverly adds to the boredom narrative. The illustrations showing how the bored people use their imaginations on the island are colourful, quirky and hilarious rounding off beautifully with the final image of Rita who, we see is no longer bored!
This is a very clever and engaging story as every adult or child experiences boredom at some time. Rita demonstrates that a little imagination can lead to interesting and exciting situations that drive boredom away.
Felicita Sala grew up in Perth, Western Australia but now lives and works in Rome. She is an award-winning illustrator both in Australia and overseas.
Picture Books for Older Readers
