Bored (Hardcover)

Utter boredom leads one imaginative girl to inspiration in this clever story from much-loved creator Felicita Sala.

Rita is bored. So, so, so bored.

She’s tried stretching her body across her bedroom, side-eyeing herself in the mirror, stomping her feet and swinging her arms. Time drags on, and there she remains: catatonic with boredom.

In her tragic and weakened state, her mind drifts to the beginning of a daydream. What if all the bored people in the world gathered together and got onto a bus? What if the boredom filled them up like balloons, with tiny heads and arms sticking out? What if they floated into the sky, bobbing along until they each spied something exciting enough to make them toot the boredom out?

By the time Rita’s mother calls her for dinner, she’s very, very busy.

Anyone who’s ever been bored will find catharsis in Rita’s plight. As all creative people eventually learn, boredom can be the best launchpad to great ideas. Felicita Sala’s expressive, inviting illustrations and sly storytelling are a guaranteed antidote to the doldrums.

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

Reviews

The author-illustrator Felicita Sala’s wonderfully elastic watercolors give playful shape to Rita’s ennui in Bored. . . . Ms. Sala has a knack for describing the almost physical discomfort of deep boredom.
—The Wall Street Journal

Sala perfectly captures the intolerable nature of boredom and how, when left uninterrupted, it can be a portal to infinite possibilities. . . . A fantastic depiction of the upside of boredom—readers will easily relate to Rita’s desperation while feeling bored and feel inspired by the places that the feeling takes her.
—School Library Journal (starred review)

Sala’s relaxed, expressive mark-making in earthy, textured watercolor and gouache is spot-on for a story about being at loose ends—one that might just convince readers to hang in there when boredom hits. Who knows where a mundane moment may take them?
—Publishers Weekly

The sheer physicality of the book is a key to its delight; this is ideal reading for kids who claim to suffer the same malady. Human forms are infinitely flexible, sometimes wiggly or flopped in impossible positions. . . . A clever reminder that from great boredom comes great invention.
—Kirkus Reviews

What starts as a child’s melodramatic apathy quickly turns into a vivid and humorous day full of imagination in Sala’s picture book. . . .Taking a page from Rita’s book, readers will be dazzled by where their silly and limitless imagination can take them to cure their boring days.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Sala breathes new life into this familiar tale with playful artwork and off-kilter humor. . . . Sala excels at depicting both the mercurial emotional energy of children and their delightfully unexpected flights of fancy in expressionistic artwork blending surprising pops of bright color and whimsical, elastic figure designs. Boredom is a feeling just about any kid can relate to, and Rita’s strange but captivating daydreams make a compelling case for spending time in one’s own imagination.
—Booklist

About the Author

Felicita Sala is an author and self-taught illustrator. Her titles include If You Run Out of Words, What's Cooking at 10 Garden Street?, What's Cooking in Flowerville?, and Lunch at 10 Pomegranate Street, which has been translated into ten languages. She is the illustrator of the Society of Illustrators Gold Medal book As Night Falls by Donna Napoli, the New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Book She Made a Monster by Lynn Fulton, and many others. She is a recipient of the Premio Andersen (the Andersen Prize). Raised in Perth, Australia, she lives in Rome, where she was born.