Alone!
Billy McGill lives all alone on the top of a hill. He likes it that way. Away from the noise and the rush of the city below, his splendid aloneness is without a sound until ... a horrible scratching and squeaking disturbs him. A mouse! So, Billy gets a cat to chase the mouse away. When that doesn’t work, he gets a dog. Then a bear, then a tiger ... with a terrible cold. Before too long, Billy’s peaceful house is filled with noise and CHAOS!
With every solution creating a bigger problem and more noise, what can he do? He has to think fast and discovers it’s not so bad having friends around ... but only on Tuesdays.
When the chaos of the invading animals (and their need for care) overwhelms Billy’s desire for solitude, it causes quite a dilemma. A lot of creative thinking and madcap events unfold to create a workable solution for all. Billy is shown just as he is: someone who loves being alone. But the introduction of so many characters into his life and the new feelings they bring add that certain ‘something missing’.
The casual yet obvious acceptance in the tale sends a gentle, positive message for those introverts out there. You can have both! With a rollicking rhyming text and colourful, zany illustrations, this is a story that finds the balance between happy aloneness and social interaction with understanding and outrageous displays of laugh-out-loud humour. A multilayered picturebook filled with compassion, respect, friendship and fun.
