Stinky

[Digging through the archives...]

This is the only Geisel winner/honor our library doesn't have, so I thought I'd check it out! It's on the classic and pervasive easy reader theme of friendship. A slightly lonely, but generally happy monster in a swamp, and a new kid in town. At first, Stinky doesn't think he could ever be friends with a HUMAN! They like to eat yucky things like cake and take baths! But maybe they're not so different....

It's a fun and engaging storyline, easy for children to predict, but familiar and humorous. The comic panels are excellently designed for the early reader experience and the art is clean-cut and elegant.

While the story defaults to male, both characters could easily have identified as female, adding a show more little diversity to the swamp. This is a more challenging easy reader, almost a chapter book, with the combination of art and text requiring a fairly fluent reader. It's one of the earlier Toon books and a particular favorite of mine. It's funny, child-friendly, and engaging and at a nice level for readers not ready for chapter books yet.

Verdict: Definitely an honor winner! I'll be adding this one to our collection and I suggest you do the same.

[Revisited: Over the past few years, our easy reader collection has shifted to work more towards emergent readers and lower level readers. Meanwhile, Toon has gotten more and more sophisticated. We have 3 copies of this and it circulates regularly, but not heavily. I still love it, but if you missed it the first time it came out I wouldn't feel the urge to go back and purchase it.]

ISBN: 978-0979923845; Published September 2008 by Toon Books; Purchased for the library show less

I think this book would be ideal for grades 1-3.
Stinky is about a swamp monster named Stinky, he loves his muddy home and pungent smells. Everything is fine and dandy until a clean and happy boy named Nick builds a treehouse in the swamp that belongs to Stinky. Stinky tries everything to get Nick away, like pranks and traps, to get Nick to leave. After a while, he realized Nick might not be half bad.
An activity I could do with my class could be a compare and contrast between the two characters, Stinky and Nick. You could have the students play roles of each of these characters to help reflect their understanding of the characters.

“Stinky” is a fascinating book with a main message of not judging someone based off of the things you think are correct. This is shown within the main character Stinky.. This character develops in that he starts off afraid of the boy in his swamp, then he attempts to scare him, but when that doesn’t work he runs away and hides, until the boy finds him and they bond over the things they have in come. This then shows Stinky that he had the wrong idea about the boy and that they could be friends after all. Something else I found very interesting about this book is that it is written and illustrated in a comic book style. I truly enjoyed this because it kept me as the reader engaged and constantly reading everything from the dialogue show more to the signs and bags. I feel this style of writing is beneficial to the reader for it allows them to take in the entire story and all the small details. show less

This is a great read for 2-4th. Stinky the swamp monster hates kids… until one shows up and they become best friends. Graphic novel that’s easy to read, gross and funny—great for reluctant readers. It is a graphic so I would use it to introduce this type of genre to students and as a choice book.

Very detailed and fun illustrations. A little too chaotic to follow at some points, but the content was perfectly executed. However, it did explore diversity, assumptions, and overcoming fear of others. Delightful and funny!

Stinky by Eleanor Davis

Stinky is a swamp monster and he lives up to his name. In this graphic novel, Stinky loves smelly onions, mushy, mucky mud and slimy slugs. What he doesn’t like are kids because they don’t like what he likes, they take BATHS, and they eat cake and apples! When a kid named Nick builds a tree house in Stinky’s swamp, Stinky thinks of several plans (Plan A, Plan B…) to scare Nick off. Nothing seems to work – from a smelly toad named Wartbelly to ghosts, Nick takes all of Stinky’s tricks in stride. Nick begins to become a permanent resident much to Stinky’s dismay. Can a boy who doesn’t mind getting dirty and a smelly swamp monster become friends? It takes a lost hat to resolve the conflict.

This show more delightful story is well supported by the comic book style graphics. Stinky has a broad, wide body, a huge mouth, big teeth and horns. His orange shirt has his name written boldly across the front. The shirt clashes deliciously with his purple, spotted body. The rich, bold colors clearly reflect the playful nature of the story. Speech bubbles with dashed lines signify that Stinky is whispering; words jump out of the speech bubbles when Stinky and Nick are excited. The pictures invite close inspection. Finding a bird with a clothespin on its beak, upside down bats and opossums, and a mole reading a book are all delightful finds. Stinky is a 2009 Honor Book for the Theodore Seuss Geisel Award which is given by ALSC (Association for Library Service to Children), a branch of ALA, for distinguished books for beginning readers. This story of unexpected friendship is highly recommended for beginning readers through third grade show less

Great for curious young readers around grades 1-2. Davis' Stinky follows the story of a monster and its toad. Stinky likes the swamp to himself just the way that it is. One day a child comes into Stinky's swamp. Stinky does not like that, so they try to do anything they can to get rid of the child.