>>> BlackFriday On the Dog (Andrew Lost #1)
I've been teaching 2nd grade for a dozen years now and have had lots of experience reading and evaluating books for children. This book presented some difficulty because it didn't lend itself well to being read aloud.
1) The dialogue is stilted with too many exclamation points and the sentences are artificially choppy. I understand the length of the sentences has to be short due to the target audience's reading level but there should be more attention paid to the quality of the sentences.
2) The scientific facts included in the book are top-notch. Judith Greenburg did yeoman work in researching her facts. Unfortunately much of the science is lost due to frantic action scenes and the choppy dialogue mentioned above.
3) One of the supporting characters is a robot named Thudd. Thudd speaks like a 2-year old. Thudd makes the diction used by Junie B. Jones appear to be of a collegiate level. When reading a book aloud to 2nd graders I don't expect to have to explain what a character is saying because the character is talking like a baby.
I strongly disliked this book.
My 7 year-old son liked it a lot.
The bottom line is that it's more important for my 7 year-old to like what he's reading than it is for me to like it. I'll let my son read these at home but I won't be using them in my classroom.
