Austin Grouper doesn’t like his new next-door neighbour, Amy, but can’t get the curly-haired, freckle-faced girl out of his head. When Amy invites Austin to her birthday party, he decides to give her a very special birthday present. Dressed as a cowboy, he sets out to lasso the moon – and with the help of a very long rope and a lot of luck, he’s able to finally show Amy how he feels.

Author Don Gillmor and illustrator Marie-Louise Gay are back with another absolutely hilarious picture book – their fourth of the collaborations that include Governor General’s Award nominees The Fabulous Song (winner of the Mr. Christie Book Award) and The Christmas Orange. The exuberant zaniness of Gay’s watercolour illustrations nicely complements Gillmor’s wry sense of humour. Gillmor has taken a relatively simple boy-meets-girl kind of story and given it new life with his ironic eye and comic’s gift of timing. Where Gillmor works by way of quiet understatement, Gay’s brightly coloured pictures make this goofy love story a big event. She fills the pages of the book with enormous close-ups of Austin and Amy, a life-sized Popsicle-stick model of a dinosaur that sprawls its way across Amy’s backyard, and a big bright shiny moon that soars through the night sky. But like Gillmor, Gay also has an eye for details – little things like Amy’s spring-like curls, Austin’s bright red superhero cap, and the knot in Austin’s lasso are certain to bring a smile to the faces of young readers.

Yuck, a Love Story isn’t nearly as complex or intricate a creation as the previous Gillmor/Gay collaborations, which might disappoint fans of the other books – there’s no Miss Doofus or Wiley Studpustle here – but this quieter, more subtle story will certainly grow on young readers in the classroom and at home.