Rotten Ralph Feels Rotten: A Rotten Ralph Rotten Reader - Hardcover

Gantos, Jack

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374363579 ISBN 13: 9780374363574

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2004

Synopsis

Rotten to the core!

When Sarah serves up a healthy, home-cooked meal chock-full of fruits and vegetables, Rotten Ralph turns up his nose and refuses to eat. With those overflowing, back-alley trash cans in mind, he has more exciting dinner plans on his menu. Garbage for dinner? Uh-oh! Rotten Ralph's bad eating habits are about to make him feel rotten for real.

In this latest installment in the popular Rotten Readers, Gantos and Rubel team up to capture their feline hero as he's feeling his worst and making us laugh at the same time.

About this title

About the Author

Jack Gantos and Nicole Rubel published their first book, Rotten Ralph, in 1976. They launched the Rotten Ralph Readers in 2001 with Rotten Ralph Helps Out.

In addition to the Rotten Ralph books, Jack Gantos is the author of Hole in My Life, a memoir that won the Michael L. Printz and Robert F. Sibert Honors, Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, a National Book Award Finalist, and Joey Pigza Loses Control, a Newbery Honor book. He lives with his family in Boston, Massachusetts.

Nicole Rubel's many books include Twice as Nice: What It's Like to Be a Twin and Grody's Not So Golden Rules. She lives in Aurora, Oregon.

Reviews

Grade 1-3–In this beginning reader, Ralph and Sarah are still going strong after almost 30 years together. True to character, the rotten cat doesn't like the healthy food that Sarah feeds him, so he raids the garbage cans in the alley. Of course, he becomes ill from his foraging and must be taken to the vet, where he is kept for observation. Lonesome for Sarah, he makes his way home, where he fixes himself some snacks. Ralph's suffering and Sarah's concern are palpable in a series of vivid illustrations that depict his worsening condition, as is their pleasure in being reunited. A great addition to the series.–Sandra Welzenbach, Villarreal Elementary School, San Antonio, TX
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* Gr. 1-3. Take one "green chicken wing," add it to "squishy squid," "furry fish," and "chunky chocolate milk," and you've got a recipe for a bellyache that makes swallowing a puzzle piece, as Curious George once did, seem health-conscious. One morning Rotten Ralph wakes up feeling ill, and a nibbled fish head on his pillow gives long-suffering Sarah all the information she needs: "Have you been eating out of the trash can again?" Off to the vet they go, where that bad red cat behaves horribly--burping in the doctor's face, for instance--even while feeling wretched. After the doctor solves his tummy trouble, he behaves even worse! The Magic-Marker intensity of Rubel's palette and the undulating quality of her lines are ideal for showing the quavery misery of nausea; in one particularly memorable spread, children see the suffering Ralph as puce-green and bloated, scavenged snacks floating around his insides. Beginning readers will gobble up this third installment of the Rotten Ralph Rotten Reader series; unlike Ralph, though, they'll have nothing to regret. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374363579
• ISBN 13: 9780374363574
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Rubel Nicole
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 48