“I’m bored!” A refrain and a feeling familiar to many children (and adults in their lives who have to hear it) leads the child at the center of this story to launch into a stream-of-conscious, ever expanding consideration of what causes boredom, what it means to be bored—and not bored—whether other creatures or inanimate objects are ever bored, and so on. In other words, boredom becomes opportunity and impetus for creative thinking that turns out to be pretty entertaining. If not for the child in the story, who’s not willing to admit as much, certainly for the child audience, for whom the Japanese protagonist’s imaginative musings are depicted in illustrations that also make clear how much fun the “bored” kid is having. (Ages 3–7)