Apart from ideas, sketches and drawings, Tomi Ungerer's notebooks show his predilection for aphorisms, puns and little stories. Out of this reservoir, a book has emerged for the first time which shows Tomi Ungerer's unusual side, which, however, is perhaps not that unusual after all: »I am a note-taker. I draw what I write down and I write down what I draw in order to express my thoughts clearly and succinctly«, as Ungerer himself puts it.

»One, Two, where's my Shoe? – Three, Four, on the Floor!« – These are the only words Tomi Ungerer needs for a story. The rest is told by his subtle and shrewd pictures, which seem to take the viewer for a fool – until he can't help but smile in recognition: Across the book's pages, Tomi Ungerer's pencil conjures up dragonflies, soldiers, scarecrows, a pig and even an ocean liner. And the line is always: ›One, Two, where's my Shoe?‹

Even before the volume ›Useless Thoughts‹, word got around that Tomi Ungerer was just as virtuous with a pen as with a pencil. He coaxes the deeper meaning from language, makes ludicrous connections, and twists and turns words come hell or high water. Wise jokes, revealing wordplay, pointed paradoxes – there is nothing more thoughtprovoking than reading these Tom-isms.

Why are sea horses always fidgety on Fridays? And how can you tell when a Rolls-Royce is hungry? You don’t know? Don’t worry, because it turns out the whole world is a question mark. Or at least the world created in this book of questions by Tomi Ungerer’s ingenious drawings: never before has someone created such cryptic but beautiful shenanigans with a punctuation mark. Pictures you will wish to look at again and again, absurd questions without answers, illustrations of unique beauty: this book is sure to leave all questions open!