Awful Ogre's Awful Day - Hardcover

Prelutsky, Jack

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688077781 ISBN 13: 9780688077785

Publisher: Greenwillow Books, 2001

Synopsis

Beloved children's poet Jack Prelutsky and acclaimed illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky have created a tour de force picture book of epic proportions and infinite appeal!

It's pouring. The wind is blowing down trees. Awful Ogre's rattlesnake wakes him. He tickles his piranha, scatters his rats, and disengages his leeches. Another wonderful day is about to begin.

Awful Ogre, huge, hungry, horrible—and totally lovable, will steal the heart of every reader. Larger than life—larger, in fact, than all other ogres, Awful Ogre packs into one day enough excitement, imagination, emotion, and sheer ebullience to last most of us a lifetime.

New York Public Library's “One Hundred Titles for Reading and Sharing,” a School Library Journal Best Book, and a New York Times Best Illustrated Book

About this title

About the Authors

Jack Prelutsky is the best-selling author of more than fifty books of poetry, including The New Kid on the Block, illustrated by James Stevenson, and Stardines Swim High Across the Sky, illustrated by Carin Berger. Jack Prelutsky lives in Washington State.

Paul O. Zelinsky is the illustrator of many acclaimed books for children. He is the illustrator of Kelly Bingham’s Z Is for Moose and Circle, Square, Moose; Jack Prelutsky’s Awful Ogre’s Awful Day; Emily Jenkins’s Toys Go Out; Alex London’s Still Life; and Anne Isaac’s Dust Devil. He is also the creator of the now-classic interactive book The Wheels on the Bus. His retelling of Rapunzel was awarded the 1998 Caldecott Medal. Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, and Swamp Angel, with different authors, all garnered him a Caldecott Honor. Paul O. Zelinsky lives with his wife in Brooklyn, New York.

From the Back Cover

It's pouring. The wind is blowing down trees. Awful Ogre's rattlesnake wakes him. He tickles his piranha, scatters his rats, and disengages his leeches. Another wonderful day is about to begin.

Awful Ogre, huge, hungry, horrible--and totally lovable, will steal the heart of every reader. Larger than life--larger, in fact, than all other ogres, Awful Ogre packs into one day enough excitement, imagination, emotion, and sheer ebullience to last most of us a lifetime

Jack Prelutsky and Paul O. Zelinsky have created a tour de force of epic proportions and infinite appeal.

Reviews

Gr 1-5-This collection of 18 witty poems chronicles a day in the life of Awful Ogre. He towers over buildings and ordinary folk with his carpet of grass-green hair; red, bulbous nose; and single, large, green-and-yellow eye. He doesn't sound real cute, but underneath he's one swell guy. In "Awful Ogre's Breakfast," Prelutsky has fun with the normal breakfast routine. The spread depicts the ogre leaning back on his chair, gazing into his bowl of, yes, scream of wheat, complete with tongues and teeth. Children are sure to memorize Prelutsky's inventive verse and will avidly search the illustrations for their hidden jokes. Take for instance "Awful Ogre's TV Time," in which his favorite channel is the Chopping Network. In "Awful Ogre Dances," Prelutsky's prose stretches across the bottom half of the spread in perfect accompaniment to Zelinsky's dozen frames of Awful Ogre lithely (honestly) gliding across the top half. "I dance with abandon/Bravura, and zest,/I carom off boulders/And beat on my chest./I pirouette wildly/And leap into space/With power, panache,/And unparalleled grace." Even though Awful Ogre claims to be the awfulest of all, he remains awfully appealing throughout his rants and misadventures. Consider purchasing an extra copy-just in case he is checked out for an awfully long time.

Lisa Gangemi Krapp, Middle Country Public Library, Centereach, NY

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

relutsky uncorks his latest collection of light verse, a divinely wretched celebration of subversity. Every detail of Awful Ogre's day offers possibility for gross-outs, from sunup ("I flick aside the lizard/ Clinging grimly to my chin,/ And now I feel I'm ready/ For my morning to begin") to sundown (a sly swat at Goodnight Moon as Awful Ogre drifts off to sleep with "Good night to furtive spiders/ That lurk in murky wells./ Good night to loathsome vermin/ With nauseating smells"). Whether he's writing a love letter to an ogress ("I long for the sight/ Of your craggy gray face,/ The might of your bone-breaking,/ Painful embrace") or puttering in the garden ("I'm growing carnivorous roses/ And oceans of overblown mold"), Awful Ogre proves an ideal agent for Prelutsky's oversize humor. Switching gears from the lushness of his Caldecott-winning Rapunzel, repeat collaborator Zelinsky presents Awful Ogre as a grotesque but goofy innocent, sillier than he is sinister. Awful may have only one eye and green hair, and a skunk might indeed curl up in his left nostril, yet he has a childlike sweetness as he dances (shown in a series of a dozen panels) or snuggles up in bed with his cactus. A virtuoso performance by two master funny-bone-ticklers. Ages 6-up.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Ages 4-8. In these wild nonsense verses and pictures, the one-eyed monster may be a curmudgeonly giant, but he's also a part of every preschooler at play, whether he's gorging on bowls of roasted troll "prepared in special slime" or scrubbing his face with weasel grease. Zelinsky extends the physicalness of Prelutsky's words with gory, wonderfully detailed double-page spreads in watercolor and pen and ink that resemble the grotesque crowds of Brueghel the Elder, as well as the wild things of Sendak. From the time the ogre wakes up in the morning with his pets ("My buzzard pecks my belly / Till I fling it from the bed"), each page celebrates a part of his awful and joyful day. One of the best is the ogre's visit to a restaurant, where he not only gobbles all the food but also the silverware, the plates, and the tablecloth. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt

AWFUL OGRE'S BREAKFAST

Oh breakfast, lovely breakfast,
You're the meal I savor most.
I sip a bit of gargoyle bile
And chew some ghoul on toast.

I linger over scrambled legs,
Complete with pickled feet,
Then finish with a piping bowl
Of steamy SCREAM OF WHEAT.

Excerpted from Awful Ogre's Awful Day by Jack Prelutsky. Copyright © 2001 by Jack Prelutsky. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Copyright © 2001 Jack Prelutsky.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-688-07778-1

Edition details

• Publisher: Greenwillow Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688077781
• ISBN 13: 9780688077785
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Zelinsky Paul O.
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 40