Toby Speed

I really liked this book for many reasons! First, I think that the overall topic and concept of this book is extremely cute! Giving potatoes and other vegetables human qualities and characteristics keeps the reader engaged because they are not used to vegetables talking, doing flips and riding amusement park rides! Also, the adventure wrapped into the story line keeps the reader engaged because they don’t know what will happen to the potatoes? Will they escape the evil chef, Hackemup? Or show more will they be part of his stew? Second, I loved the rhyme scheme that was intertwined within the text! If/When this book would be used for a read-aloud, the teacher could establish a rhythm so the students could follow along. Also, the teacher could assess the student’s knowledge of rhyme and have them guess the word at the end of certain phrases! For example, the teacher would read “With a plop, plop, plop, in the chowder they…” and leave off the word “drop” and have the students use their knowledge of rhyme and context clues to guess the word. Third and finally, I loved how the illustrations are enlightening for the students because they show the vegetables having the proper emotions through their facial expressions. Also, they have details such as the rides that the potatoes are riding on as well as the directionality and motions of the potatoes as they are escaping the evil chef! I will definitely be using this book once I have my own classroom and it will be a wonderful collection to my classroom library! show less

LFL find that would appeal much more to my inner child and would have to young me, rather than to adult me. A magical musical word-play that is akin to nonsense verse, a good fit for the nonsensical plot about a big party, for cows only, on the moon.

I liked this book for three reasons. The first reason I liked this book was because of the illustrations. They really enhance the book because they capture more emotion than what the words alone would have given. This book is a modern fantasy and I think in this book the illustrations paired along nicely with the genre. For example, the pages with the potatoes on the Farris Wheel shows them flipping through the air and the wheel spinning. You can tell by the faces on the potatoes how brave show more they really are.

The second reason I liked this book was because of the language. The author had a rhyme pattern in the book and I think it made the book more whimsical and flowed very nicely. I also like how the author made unpredictable rhymes. He did not go to make the easy rhyme, he really expressed a lot of vocabulary with his rhymes. For example, he rhymes "troupe" with "alley-oop".

The last thing I liked about this book was the characters. The potatoes are cute little spheres of fun and travel together on adventures. They are brave and fearless and just want to have fun. Also I like how the author created the "evil" chef that wants to make them into dinner. He is sinister and is eventually surrounded by the heroic potatoes. I think the big idea of this book is to show all the good that comes out of being brave and how you can be brave even if you're small and seemingly weak. show less

In my opinion, this is a good book. I liked this book because the writing was engaging. The story used onomatopoeia to add emotion and sound. Some examples of onomatopoeia from the story were “creak-cracky” and “Chop! Chop! Chop!” These words made reading the story more lively and interactive. Whenever I came across one of these words, I could hear the sound in my mind. I also liked this book because the illustrations were appropriate to the mood of the story. When the chef was show more chasing after the potatoes to catch them for his soup, he told them, “It’s the last stop for potatoes, Yes, the last stop for potatoes”. The potatoes were illustrated with scared, angry, and sad faces. This made me feel the worried feelings the potatoes felt when the chef was catching them. None of the potatoes wanted to be cooked, so they were in fear for their lives. The big idea of this story is to show the importance of being brave. The potatoes were brave throughout the entire story which is what helped them be able to escape danger. show less