• Age: 3 to 7
• Grade: k to 2

“Don’t slam the door!” pleads a parent as a boy and his dog head out to run an errand, but the distracted boy doesn't hear. What follows is a fantastical calamity of epic and silly proportions, all thanks to a slammed door that dislodges a red ball. As the ball bounces through the neighborhood, it unleashes an escalating series of slapstick events that involve animals and people thrown off course and into the air, traffic jams and near-collisions, a fire-breathing dragon, tiny alien creatures –– and a boy completely oblivious to the chaos he has caused.
Full of details both large and small, this near-wordless picture book is a riotous experience of kinetic artwork and onomatopoeia with enough havoc to last many readings. It will leave kids—and adults—thinking a second time before slamming any doors!

ADAM STOWER is a graduate of both the Norwich School of Art and the University of Brighton. He has authored and illustrated several picture books, including Silly Doggy!, and won the Norfolk Library Silver Award for Children’s Books for Slam!. He lives in Brighton, England.

Adam Stower's profile page

• Long-listed, Capitol Choices - Noteworthy Books for Children and Teens

"Stower's drawings are magnificent... Child readers will love to tease meaning out of the complex images."

Resource Links

"...an amusing calamitous fantasia...with seek-and-find appeal in the ongoing trajectory of various items and critters and in surprising takes on the town both above and belowground."

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"A book to be added to public and primary school library collections."

Canadian Review of Materials

"Follow the bouncing red ball, from the top of the hill to the subterranean depths at its bottom: a perfect example of illustrated cause and effect. This title has multiple uses for language arts curriculum tied to a fantasy-based plot. A first purchase."

School Library Journal

"...a cumulative contagion of catastrophe...with teeming action on every page."

Kirkus Reviews

"Funny and imaginative, this book is appealing for all children."

Education Library, The University of British Columbia

"The story is a feast of pratfalls, pileups, unexpected trajectories, and collisions with soft foods ... satisfyingly silly."

Publishers Weekly