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The Small Adventure Of Popeye And Elvis (2009)

by Barbara O'Connor(Favorite Author)

3.68 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0374370559 (ISBN13: 9780374370558)

languge

English

genre

Humor

publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

review 1: Nothing against the writing, or whatever. I just didn't feel like there was much going on at all, even though there was a small adventure and boats with cryptic notes inside. The "small Southern town in America" setting and feel of the book was difficult for my EL410 students to digest. However, even though at first my students thought the book was boring, they soon became interested in the "adventure," some of them going so far as to finish reading the book early.
review 2: Junior Books ProjectCategory: Realistic FictionSource: Dr. KimmelThis adventure book is great for students between grades 4-6. In this book Popeye lives a boring life in Fayette, South Carolina with his dog, Boo, and uncle and grandma. Popeye does the same boring stuff everyday until a Holi... moreday Rambler gets stuck in a muddy ditch and he meets the family who lives in it. Popeye befriends one of the boys, Elvis, and together they go walking through the woods. Popeye looks up to Elvis. He loves Elvis' "so-what" attitude and how Elvis has so many great insults. Out of nowhere, they see a boat floating down the creek made from a Yoo-Hoo carton. Inside the boat is a note. Elvis and Popeye find several of these boats over a number of days and are determined to find out where the boats are coming from. When they meet the little girl who has been making these boats, she shows them a dog graveyard. Popeye couldn't believe that all this time living in boring Fayette, something so cool like a dog graveyard was right in his backyard past the woods. When Elvis' family's Holiday Rambler gets unstuck, it's a bitter sweet moment for Popeye. He wonders if he'll ever have as much fun as he did with Elvis once he leaves, but Popeye knows that one thing he can count on is reminiscing about the small adventure he and Elvis had together.The front of the jacket has a picture of Elvis and Popeye spotting the Yoo-Hoo boat floating down the creek in the woods. There aren't very many colors used for the illustration, but one color that pops out is the green that is used to color the trees. It is a very dark hunter green and it takes up almost half the page. The title and the author's name are listed at the top of the book. If you open up the book to look at the full jacket, you see that the illustration from the front continues onto the back. There is also an insert of a part in the book where Popeye helps Glory, Elvis's mom, out with some country lyrics on the back of the jacket. If you open up the book, the left flap has a summary of the story and the right flap has a small bio of the author and some praise for her other book "Greetings from Nowhere."I really enjoyed this book. I liked how there were definitions of words Popeye learned from his grandma throughout the book. Not only were there definitions, but there was a sentence right after that used the word. I got to learn a couple new words from this. My favorite is loquacious, meaning talkative. I told my husband that night I read that part that he was loquacious haha. A great activity to use with this book is a vocabulary activity with the words Popeye learned from Velma. You can also do a history lesson about the Kings and Queens of England. A science activity about water density, floating and sinking, and create their own boats. less

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