The Fantastic Frame 2 – Splat! Another Messy Sunday

Lin Oliver's The Fantastic Frame 2 - Splat! Another Messy Sunday is a magic-painting adventure for 7 year olds about one hour in Paris that will not wait.

What happens

Tiger and Luna live next door to Viola Dots, who has a golden frame on her wall with a clock on the front. When the clock strikes four, the painting opens and swallows you. If you're not back by five you stay in there forever.

This week's painting is Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, painted in 1884, and they go in as themselves and come out the other side into the world of the picture. Viola tries to come too, gets stuck halfway through with her bustle in the living room, and has to be pulled out by a talking pig in a bow tie.

Then it's the river, a monkey with very sharp teeth, a ruined picnic, a mother hitting Tiger with her umbrella, and soldiers with whistles.

Tiger spots a boy in a rowboat. He thinks it's David, the son Viola lost into the frame fifty years ago, and that's the whole reason they keep going in.

On the mainland a gang of barefoot boys haul them out of the mud, cheer at the word Americain, and then shove Tiger into a rich man with a gold pocket watch.

Which is how two children end up in handcuffs with forty minutes left.

What makes it work is the clock. Tiger tells you the story himself and keeps checking his Batman watch, so you're counting down with him and every small delay costs something. Luna is the better company of the two. She talks to a crowd who can't understand a word of it, draws pictures in the sand instead, and swings a stolen umbrella like a pirate.

The best bit is quieter. Near the end Tiger looks at his own arms and sees they've turned into tiny dots of paint, like everything else in the picture.

It's tense rather than scary, though the prison cell is a real low point and both children cry in it. There's also a staged fight that gets someone a bloody nose. It passes quickly and nothing in it lingers.

Your reader will also come out knowing a real painting, which is a nice thing to get for free.

What to read next

To see where the frame took them first, Danger! Tiger Crossing is the one that starts it, and that painting is a Rousseau jungle with a tiger in it.