I also enjoyed the use of word bubbles and comic-like feel about the book.
I appreciated the simplistic illustrations, which look like a child (a very talented one) could have drawn them. The boys bond over the course of the week, and really discover a lot about nature (not really)! However, Eamon and James do emabark on some quirky adventures! The two boys are looking forward to spending time together at a nature summer camp. Two boys, Eamon and James, go to Eamon's grandparents house at the beach. Readers have to really understand sarcism to relate to Marla Frazee's "A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever." The humour in this comic-like picture book is sure to make elementary aged students laugh. In all fairness, I read this book in a huge stack of books the night before a meeting with a publisher, so maybe I need to give it another shot. I feel really strange writing something negative, because it's in contrast to the opinions of so many other people I respect. But, I keep reading glowing reviews of it and was quite surprised to see a starred review of it in School Library Journal. It's hard for me to say this because I love Marla Frazee's books, and I really, truly wanted to like this one but it just didn't work for me. I think this is one of those books that is really written for adults, and not for 4-6 year olds. I found it confusing (not good in a picture book) and it took me a few tries to get through it. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that I'm the only person in the world who didn't like this book.
so I'm changing my star rating of this one. I gave this book another try after listening to the discussion about it at the ALA Notable Committee. Well deserved! (The winner is Jonathan Bean's At Night.) It was just named an honor book in the picture book category of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. I see it as a picture book for children who can read very comfortably on their own - and should have no trouble seeing the humor in each scene. This story and concept, however, begs the sarcastic discrepancies done so perfectly here. I'm not saying that all picture books should do what the author/illustrator have done here - if all picture books are telling "two stories" with texts and pictures, then this one addition will be quite boring. But more over, it is a picture book that NEEDS to be read WITH the pictures. It is what I thought of as a quintessential American picture book - it is about summer camp, spending time with your best buddy, by the beach, with someone's grandparents, having a great time doing all sorts of stuff and some mischief under the grown-ups' noses. One Librarian Had the Best Reading Experience Ever with this wonderful title.
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