This sympathetic portrayal of a boy struggling with school has an audience.
Third grader Trevor Lee makes every effort to avoid revealing that he still can’t read.
Educator Blevins directly addresses the shame of reading difficulties in this middle-grade novel. Trevor Lee is “as good at reading as a fish is good at climbing a cactus,” but his teacher, Miss Burger, wants every child to read aloud at the upcoming Parents’ Night. To help readers understand the challenge Trevor Lee faces, the author includes the story they’ll perform: “The Little Red Hen and Her Lazy-Butt Friends.” The humor of the narrative extends beyond the many references to body parts: Trevor Lee’s fear of reading in public is matched by his fear of the wrath of his farming family’s rooster. Both lead him to ridiculous actions. Further, his best friend, Pinky, is always at hand to add more trouble—as when they fail to follow field-trip rules and end up stuck in a tree. Happily, some extra instruction from the teacher and the support of his parents and nonreading Mamaw help him rise to the big occasion. Each short chapter is illustrated with grayscale drawings, often a head shot of the freckle-faced white boy, and ends with a comment in Trevor Lee’s own words: “Some days lay a big rotten egg.” His folksy language reflects his rural Tennessee origins, but his repeated expressions of distaste for girls limit the book’s appeal. Pinky is depicted as a child of color, Miss Burger presents white, and his classmates are diverse.
This sympathetic portrayal of a boy struggling with school has an audience. (Fiction. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947159-06-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: One Elm Books
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some...
With a little help from his audience, a young storyteller gets over a solid case of writer’s block in this engaging debut.
Despite the (sometimes creatively spelled) examples produced by all his classmates and the teacher’s assertion that “Stories are everywhere!” Ralph can’t get past putting his name at the top of his paper. One day, lying under the desk in despair, he remembers finding an inchworm in the park. That’s all he has, though, until his classmates’ questions—“Did it feel squishy?” “Did your mom let you keep it?” “Did you name it?”—open the floodgates for a rousing yarn featuring an interloping toddler, a broad comic turn and a dramatic rescue. Hanlon illustrates the episode with childlike scenes done in transparent colors, featuring friendly-looking children with big smiles and widely spaced button eyes. The narrative text is printed in standard type, but the children’s dialogue is rendered in hand-lettered printing within speech balloons. The episode is enhanced with a page of elementary writing tips and the tantalizing titles of his many subsequent stories (“When I Ate Too Much Spaghetti,” “The Scariest Hamster,” “When the Librarian Yelled Really Loud at Me,” etc.) on the back endpapers.
An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some budding young writers off and running. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0761461807
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Amazon Children's Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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BOOK REVIEW
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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