Saturday, October 17, 2015

Saturday Morning Cartoons- The Lord of the Hat

23310740Skye, Obert. The Lord of the Hat (Creature from My Closet #5)
October 6th 2015 by Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
E ARC from Edelweiss Above the Treeline

Rob's closet has been fairly quiet; when he and Trevor and Jack try to open it, all they manage to do is mark Jack's hand with a blowdryer-heated brand of Beardy. That's okay, because Rob's father has won a budiness award, and he is taking the family to the awards ceremony in New Mexico. He rents and RV, and Jack and Trevor are invited along. They soon realize that traveling with them is Seussol, a combination of The Cat in the Hat, Collum, and Smeagol from The Lord of the Rings. Suessol is determined that they will travel to the top of a mountain shaped like Beardy that has fire burning on it, and after many goofy travails, the team manages to get there.The next volume in this notebook novel series is A Lego Carol.
Strengths: My students enjoy this notebook novel series, and I live in hope that it will lead them to investigate the books whose characters emerge from Rob's closet. There is an attempt a plot. I can't keep enough notebook novels on the shelves.
Weaknesses: As much as I enjoy Stick Dog, I'm not personally a fan of these. The attempts at goofy humor fall flat for me, the pictures aren't anything great, and there's not a lot of action. They are also paper-over-board bindings, so regularly fall apart.
What I really think: Did you know that brown sugar Pop-Tarts, the last time I looked, had fewer grams of sugar than most of the fruit based Pop-Tarts? Have you ever wanted to avoid a fight with a picky eater enough that you bought and let her eat brown sugar Pop-Tarts? This feels like that. Not really any worse than eating a cherry toaster pastry, but you somehow feel worse handing it over.

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