The greatest disasters happen on the head. Like this father, who just smiled in the bathroom mirror with an optimistic brushed-up quiff and then realized that his hair didn’t want to stay with him anymore. One jump and they’re gone. Shock!
The man was very attached to his hair. “Or rather, he was very attached to them,” writes Jörg Mühle. They had always done everything together since he was a little baby. They had been to kindergarten with him and had learned to read, write and do arithmetic with him at school. It’s hair-raising. If only there were hair.
Mühle’s picture book “When Daddy’s Hair Got Holidays”, intended for beginning readers, but also extremely enjoyable for adults, turns the rebellion into a slapstick hunt. “Stay here!” Dad yells and tumbles into the bathtub with tasty treats. The hair escapes into the hallway and through a window to freedom.
Dad follows them with a landing net, through mountains and valleys to the city. In the department store he almost caught her with the vacuum cleaner. But the cable is too short.
The hair, bustling little strokes, have wanderlust and end up overseas. From there they send taunting postcards and selfies from “Haargentina”, “Nordhaarmerika” and “Singhaarpur”.
The Frankfurt illustrator has also been publishing his own stories for a number of years, and Mühle has become known with books about rabbit children, penguins and bears. His hair drama is a divine grotesque.
