The Big Green Book

by Robert Graves

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Description

A little boy finds a big green book in the attic and learns many handy magic spells that he uses with surprising results.

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3 reviews
This is a fun book. A little boy finds a magic book and turns himself into an old man and does tricks on his guardian aunt and uncle using magic. It's one of those great kid fantasy of power books. What would be the most powerful thing that a kid could imagine doing? Perhaps beating his guardian at cards until he owned all of the guardian's possessions. at the end he gives it back and hides the book because it made him feel TOO powerful. I think kids really understand that too: what if you get what you wanted everytime you asked?
Literary Merit: Very Good
Characterization: Very Good
Recommendations: Kids books, picture books, teachers
Reading Level: younger grades, Elementary - 6

Jack lives with his aunt, uncle and their large dog (who likes to chase rabbits which they find out later the family eats a lot of rabbit stew). Jack’s aunt and uncle do not treat him very well. Jack wants to do things that little boys would do, but aunt and uncle continually make him do things with them. One day he finds the big green book hidden in his attic. The book is a magical book. Jack learns he can do a lot of things with this book, such as changing his appearance and casting various spells. He decides to play a bit of a trick on his aunt and uncle by turning himself into an old show more man who is great at card tricks.

I won’t spoil the end of the book, but you will enjoy reading about the tricks he plays on his aunt, uncle, and even the dog.

I would recommend this book to younger children, Elementary -6th grade, parents, teachers and anyone who enjoys a little magic. I absolutely loved the illustrations in this book. The characters are drawn well and the dog is adorable.
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Author Information

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259+ Works 40,616 Members
Robert Graves (also known as Robert Ranke Graves) was born in 1895 in London and served in World War I. Goodbye to All That: an Autobiography (1929), was published at age thirty three, and gave a gritty portrait of his experiences in the trenches. Graves edited out much of the stark reality of the book when he revised it in 1957. Although his most show more popular works, I, Claudius (1934) and its sequel, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina (1935), were produced for television by the BBC in 1976 and seen in America on Masterpiece Theater, he was also famous as a poet, producing more than 50 volumes of poetry. Graves was awarded the 1934 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for both I, Claudius and Claudius the God. Also a distinguished academic, Graves was a professor of English in Cairo, Egypt, in 1926, a poetry professor at Oxford in the 1960s, and a visiting lecturer at universities in England and the U.S. He wrote translations of Greek and Latin works, literary criticism, and nonfiction works on many other topics, including mythology and poetry. He lived most of his life in Majorca, Spain, and died after a protracted illness in 1985. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Robert Graves has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.

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Sendak, Maurice (Illustrator)

Common Knowledge

Original publication date
1962
First words
Long ago a little boy called Jack lived with his uncle and his aunt and a big dog (who used to chase rabbits) in a house among the fields.
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)But the dog was now so scared of rabbits that they never had rabbit pie again in that house, ever!

Classifications

Genre
Children's Books
DDC/MDS
823.912Literature & rhetoricEnglish & Old English literaturesEnglish fiction1900-1901-19991901-1945
LCC
PZ7 .G77525 .BLanguage and LiteratureFiction and juvenile belles lettresFiction and juvenile belles lettresJuvenile belles lettres
BISAC

Statistics

Members
193
Popularity
168,221
Reviews
3
Rating
(3.86)
Languages
7 — Danish, English, French, German, Norwegian (Bokmål), Spanish, Swedish
Media
Paper
ISBNs
19
ASINs
4