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Rabbit & Robot and Ribbit is the newest chapter book from the marvelously silly Cece Bell. In Rabbit & Robot: The Sleepover we first met the two friends working out their differences at their first sleepover. The best beginning reader chapter books seem to be those where friends work out their differences and/or their differences make for a stronger friendship. Bell brings all of that and more to her fantastic chapter books.
In Rabbit & Robot and Ribbit, jealousy is at the heart of the story. Robot has a new friend, Ribbit, and Rabbit is feeling left out. Especially since the only word that Ribbit says is "ribbit." However, "ribbit" means much more than just "ribbit," but only Robot can, using his Built-in Frog Glossary, translate. Bell layers on the wordplay, with Robot telling Rabbit that he is "engrossed" in something and Rabbit responding, "Gross!" Rabbit and Ribbit connect over their love of the television show Cowboy Jack Rabbit but clash again when Ribbit wants to be Cowboy Jack Rabbit in their pretend play. Ribbit is a girl and everyone knows girls can't be Cowboy Jack!
Through it all, the three manage to work things out, although it takes Robot overheating and falling over for Rabbit and Ribbit to truly bond. There are context clues and picture clues that will help emerging readers as they laugh their way through this fun new book and be ready for the next book in this super series!
Source: Review Copy
It's a very good time to be an emerging reader, especially because Tom Angleberger and Cece Bell, celebrity super couple of the kid's book world, have teamed up again! This time, the duo bring their weird, wacky senses of humor to Inspector Flytrap, a series of books featuring a hard boiled detective who just happens to be a Venus Flytrap.
Being a detective - and a plant - has its challenges. Happily, Inspector Flytrap (who is constantly correcting people who refer to him as Mr. Flytrap) has an assistant, Nina, who puts him on a skateboard and does all the driving whenever they need to get to a crime scene quickly. Nina is a goat, which has a few drawbacks since she will eat anything. As the Inspector says, "it's scary to have an assistant who eats everything, especially for a plant like me." Nina also has a standard flip response to almost everything, which is, "Big deal."
The first Big Deal case (no small deal cases for him) readers get to see Inspector Flytrap tackle comes from Lulu Emu, a museum employee who take the Inspector and Nina into the Top Secret Art Lab to help solve the mystery of the strange yellow blob on a newly discovered, extremely rare painting by Leonardo Da Vinci. In fact, this happens to be the only flower painting Da Vinci every created. Nina, being Nina, licks the yellow blob and notes that it tastes salty. The Inspector soon cracks the case, the solution of every case getting a full page, multi-panel comic strip. Turns out, Da Vinci sneezed on his own painting, leaving a booger on the canvas. Lulu Emu is disappointed as she thought it was a secret message, a la a Don Brown novel, but her coworker in charge of the museum's Gallery of Mucus is thrilled!
The gags and goofiness in Inspector Flytrap continue throughout the four chapters of the novel in which the Inspector solves three cases and spends one chapter eating lunch at the restaurant where he first met Nina. Inspector Flytrap takes a lot of calls, and one of my favorite jokes in the book comes when he gets a call or two from a fly with a case. Also, Nina usually eats evidence or missing items that have been found, which is also hilarious. There is also a really great range of animals in the Inspector Flytrap series, including a sloth and a dodo, two favorites of mine. I ordered this series for my library before I even read them and now, having read the first book, I plan to order a couple more sets - the Inspector Flytrap books are going to be hot, hot, hot!
Book 2 in the Inspector Flytrap series:
Coming in January 2017!
Source: Review Copy
I love Cece Bell's kooky sense of humor, best on display in her Sock Monkey Trilogy. Bell is also a great storyteller, as her fantastic, award winning graphic novel El Deafo proves. With her newest picture book, Chuck and Woodchuck, bell combines both these gifts for a silly, sweet story of friendship.
It's show and tell and our narrator, Caroline, has brought her grandfather's ukulele to share. Other kids brought a sombrero, a baseball, a tiny pencil and a tadpole to share. Chuck brought a woodchuck, saying only, "This is woodchuck." Woodchuck turns out to be a hoot - and helpful. Especially to Caroline. When Caroline is cold out on the playground one day, Woodchuck gives her a hat to wear. It turns out to be Chuck's, and he will not let Caroline give it back.
This kind of thoughtful, sweet behavior from Woodchuck, along with silence from Chuck, continues. Dropped cupcakes are replaced, paintings are replaced and lines are whispered during the school play as Woodchuck, by way of Chuck, helps out Caroline. Gradually, Chuck finds his voice and he, Caroline and Woodchuck end the book by walking home together, hand in hand.
Chuck and Woodchuck is a gentle story about a friendship that blossoms with the help of an unforgettable, unexpected middleman. And, of course, Chuck and Woodchuck is a great reason to trot out the classic tongue twister!
Source: Review Copy
If you know anything about kid's books, kid's book awards and graphic novels, then the name Cece Bell should not be new to you. I had the pleasure of getting to know her work before she wowed the world with the 2015 Newbery Honor book, El Deafo,
and am so happy to get to spend more time with her books now, especially her creation, Sock Monkey and all his friends. Bell has a sensibility that is a bit left of everyday and a wonderful way of somehow making every story, very subtly and sweetly, about acceptance, friendship, bravery and love. Originally published almost 10 years ago, Candlewick wisely, happily, has reissued Sock Money Takes a Bath, Sock Monkey Boogie-Woogie and Sock Monkey Rides Again.
Sock Monkey is a famous toy actor. He is also kind of a stand in for toddlers. In Sock Money Takes a Bath, Sock Monkey gets some good news and some bad news. He has been nominated* for "Best Supporting Toy in a Motion Picture" and has been invited to attend the Oswald Awards Ceremony at the Big Theater. The asterisk notes that "Nominees MUST be clean." Just thinking about taking a bath makes Sock Monkey, "dizzy with fear." Happily, his best friends, Miss Bunn, Froggie and Blue Pig are free to help him out. Miss Bunn takes him to bathe with mild soap and a few other monkeys in a hot springs atop a snowy mountain. Froggie helps him rinse in the clear, cool water of a pond and Blue Pig gets Sock Monkey to the desert where he can bask "all day in the sizzling sunshine." Clean and calm, Sock Monkey heads to the awards where he faces disappointments and surprises and a lot of great word play from Bell.
While I love all three books, I think that Sock Monkey Boogie-Woogie just might be my favorite. Sock Monkey is going to the Big Celebrity Dance and is super excited - until he discovers he doesn't have a partner! His three best friends are traveling, but they send home gifts that come together to make - another monkey! Sock Buddy can make cupcakes AND turns out to be the perfect dance partner! They impress everyone at the dance and, best of all, when Sock Monkey's friends meet Sock Buddy, they feel like they've known him forever. What I especially love about Sock Monkey Boogie-Woogie is the fact that Sock Monkey and Sock Buddy both seem to be guys. Bell makes the less conventional choice and it makes the book all the more completely lovable.
Sock Monkey Rides Again finds our famous toy actor in another difficult situation. This time, it's not the prospect of having to bathe that is throwing him off, it's the fact that he will have to kiss the leading lady! In order to star as Red Reardon in "Hubbub at the Happy Canyon Hoedown," Sock Monkey will also have to learn to yodel, ride a horse, lasso a cow and get some cool duds. As always, Sock Monkey's friends are there to help out. But, when it comes time to kiss Lulu Nevada, he just can't do it and Lulu is left in tears. No matter how he tries to console her, he realizes there is really only one thing he can do, and he does it. And the director gets his shot!
I have been reading Sock Money Takes a Bath, Sock Monkey Boogie-Woogie and Sock Monkey Rides Again over and over to my students, from kindergarten to fifth grade, and they all love Sock Monkey. Also, all three books always seem to spark some kind of discussion, whether it's about how to make a sock monkey, or looking at pictures of the monkeys in the hot springs.
The original inspirations for the cast of the Sock Monkey books!
More books by Cece Bell
Source: Review Copy
Cece Bell's graphic novel memoir, El Deafo, with color by David Lasky, tells the story of losing 80% of her hearing at age four and has been getting a lot of well deserved advance attention. The review copy boasts stellar blurbs from, among others, R.J. Palacio, author of Wonder, and Raina Telgemeier, author of the graphic novel, Smile. Palacio, Telgemeier and Bell's amazing books about
Beginning reader books, the good ones anyway, seem to center around two friends. Friends who are usually opposites. I always think that this friend quota has been filled (Frog & Toad, George & Martha, Elephant & Piggie, Benny & Penny, Dodsworth & Duck) and then someone comes up with a new pair. With her book Rabbit & Robot: The Sleepover, Cece Bell has created a fantastic new beginning
Rabbit & Robot and Ribbit is the newest chapter book from the marvelously silly Cece Bell. In Rabbit & Robot: The Sleepover we first met the two friends working out their differences at their first sleepover. The best beginning reader chapter books seem to be those where friends work out their differences and/or their differences make for a stronger friendship. Bell brings all of that and more to her fantastic chapter books.
