"It's always an occasion for jubilation when a picture book arrives whose combination of text and illustrations makes you pause and consider: re-examine; interpret and discuss.  This does not happen often enough in the largely linear tradition of the New Zealand picture book.  Notable recent exceptions include Gavin Bishop's The House that Jack Built, and Lloyd Jones' and Graham Gash's Napoleon and the Chicken Farmer, while further back there is also Bishop's lamentably-out-of-print classic The Horror of Hickory Bay. 

It is surprising that this should be the state of affairs, given the splendidly subversive and innovative works originating in the United States and Australia (think Lane Smith, Shaun Tan, et al) which have long been available in this country.  As far as illustration goes the closest local comparisons, other than the trade books already mentioned, occur in the New Zealand School Journal: works by artists such as Ali Teo, Daron Parton and Kirsty Lillico to name a few.  Well, in Clubs we have a new team to celebrate: the already recognised novelist Kate De Goldi and newcomer artist Jacqui Colley.  From the vibrant colour contrasts of the book's cover with its childlike drawings we know we are in for a treat.  Next up, the blackboard endpapers are one of the book's highlights.  Here we are alerted to the postmodern, poststructuralist imperatives behind this creation where words make and define us.  The messages decorating the blackboard – teacher and student originated – both contain and extend the boundaries of the tale that follows.  'Words of the week' such as chiaroscuro, montage and deconstruct signal the intent of the writer and the method of the artist.  It is an inspired idea.  The world represented by white chalk on a blackboard is a microcosm of the world of and beyond the classroom, and outside the constraints of the book itself.  Because of the many visual 'distractions', the word-narrative by itself is not really designed to be read as a continuous text; however if read this way the reader will be delighted by De Goldi's dextrous word-play and the rhythmic, rounded text (what else would one expect of this consummate wordsmith?), to the extent that it is easy to overlook and forgive the fact that Clubs' storyline about a class of children forming rival clubs is deliberately slight. 

The protagonist, Lolly Leopold (short for Lorenza but you'd better call me Lolly, or there'll be big trouble), is unwilling or unable to join any of the clubs that spring up in this recognisable Christchurch school, but manages to find her own unique way of being infected with the clubs epidemic.  Her Grass Growing Spectator's Club, while succumbing to its own particular rules and conventions (there's a lesson here), is idiosyncratic and subversive enough to stand out from those of the hoi polloi.  What sustains and deepens the narrative, even more than De Goldi's skill in language and characterisation, are Colley's collage illustrations utilising pencil, crayons and mixed media and which are modelled on children's own creative techniques.  Their skewed and strategic placements force the reader/viewer to explore multitudinous micro-fictions, reading and re-reading the words as art and the art as words.  Furthermore, the multiple layers of story are graphically represented by montages, pictures placed over and under other pictures.  Indeed, we are compelled to treat the book as the physical object it is, literally having to turn it upside down in order to see the world from Lolly's perspective.  And the end of the story is not really the end at all, despite the circularity of the phrase My teacher is a glorious/lovesome creature. (One is tempted to transpose 'loathsome' for 'lovesome', hence subtly suggesting the fine line that divides order from chaos, the playground from the shark eat shark business world as Lolly's Dad describes it.)  The final two double-page blackboard sequences continue to have great fun with language; they hint at future clubs; and finally give us the programme for Grandparents' Day, the point to which the Clubs story has been heading all along.  Lolly's Club has as its password the answer to the question What is the law of gravity? De Goldi and Colley will certainly know and understand this law, but like all great picture books collaborators they refuse to be defined by it.  Highly recommended, especially for older readers who will find much to think about and discuss.'