Potato Sack Fun
Written: Mar 28 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Neat flip up feature. Potatoes. Potatoes. Potatoes.
Cons: Ordinary plot
The Bottom Line: I like the flip up feature. Kids may like it too.
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| nagels's Full Review: Crescent Dragonwagon - Is This a Sack of Potatoes? |
One bonus of reading and reviewing children’s books is the opportunity to become familiar with new (to me) authors, the latest of whom is Crescent Dragonwagon. She was born Ellen Zolotow in New York City and is the author of over forty published books in a variety of genres. She’s written at least 6 cook books including The Passionate Vegetarian and more recently The Cornbread Gospels. Ms. Dragonwagon has authored over 20 children’s books including Brass Button, Annie Flies the Birthday Cake, and The Itch Book. A co-founder of the non-profit Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow, she now lives in southeastern Vermont.
Children like to hide. They like to pretend. They like to think they’ve bamboozled their adults. My youngest charges love to hide under the table, in a corner, or behind a door. Their game is predictable, their presence obvious, but I always feign befuddlement until they leap out at me with a delighted squeal of “Here I am!” Here lies the appeal of Is This a Sack of Potatoes?
Spudopsis
Charlie sees his mom ascending the stairs to put him to bed. He playfully crawls under the blanket and hides. Mom good-naturedly plays along and runs her hands over the lump in the bed trying to guess what’s under there. Her first guess is a sack of potatoes, but it can’t be that because she spies a toe, a toe that’s quickly pulled back under the covers.
Mom continues to pat and tap and guess. A ton of tomatoes? A peck of pears? A cave of bears? Where could Charlie have gone? Charlie answers Mom’s questions, but she pretends no to hear his responses or recognize his muffle voice. The story’s happy ending is predictable. Can’t you just see the hugs?
Miscellaneous Thoughts and Perceptions
Catherine Stock illustrates this book with complementary watercolor artistry. The faces of the characters are captivatingly expressive and the colors are bright. Maybe it’s because I’ve not seen many of these, but I really like the flip up technique and seeing a picture under a picture. The darker hues of Charlie under the blanket are perfectly in tune, and the pictures atop the flaps blend with the page art precisely. On some of the pages Mommy looks attractive enough for a nice Daddy bedtime story also. Young readers are sure to enjoy the picture of a bed full of bears over and under the blanket and the fantasmic picture of a bed awash with an avalanche of bears, potatoes, tomatoes and pears. I enjoyed Ms. Stock’s artistic representation of the pears. Those preferring realism might say the pears annoyed.
This book is said to be for ages 4-8. The many sites I checked are consistent in this assessment. Obviously no four-year-old could read this book, but most would enjoy hearing the story read TO them. Some of the more difficult words are: squiggle, wriggle, wiggle, potatoes, stalk, peck, hibernate, cozy, crawled, weather, and carefully.
The author uses words playfully and creatively with words like squiggle, yesses, hiddenly, there-ily. She also makes use of frequent rhyme and repetition. I’d like to have seen a repeated refrain throughout the book enabling young readers to anticipate and participate in the story. For the most part the vocabulary is reasonable for this age group.
I enjoyed the title, the flip flap device, the artistry of this book, and the author’s killer pen name. The story is yet another take on the age old hide and seek theme. Not entirely novel or fresh, it’s still a topic of which youngsters never seem to tire.
Reading level 4-8
Hardcover 32
Language- English
Dimensions 9.4 by 8.7 by .6 inches
Recommended:
Yes
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