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Summary
Summary
Rotten to the core!
When Sarah serves up a healthy, home-cooked meal chock-full of fruits and vegetables, Rotten Ralph turns up his nose and refuses to eat. With those overflowing, back-alley trash cans in mind, he has more exciting dinner plans on his menu. Garbage for dinner? Uh-oh! Rotten Ralph's bad eating habits are about to make him feel rotten for real.
In this latest installment in the popular Rotten Readers, Gantos and Rubel team up to capture their feline hero as he's feeling his worst and making us laugh at the same time.
Author Notes
Jack Gantos was born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania on July 2, 1951. He received a BFA and a MA from Emerson College. While in college, he and an illustrator friend, Nicole Rubel, began working on picture books. After a series of rejections, they published their first book, Rotten Ralph, in 1976. His other books include Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, a National Book Award Finalist, Joey Pigza Loses Control, a Newbery Honor book, and Dead End in Norvelt, which won the 2012 Newbery Medal. His memoir, Hole in My Life, won the Michael L. Printz and Robert F. Sibert Honors. Jack's follow-up to Hole in My Life is The Trouble in Me He also teaches courses in children's book writing and children's literature. He dev.eloped the master's degree program in children's book writing at Emerson College and the Vermont College M.F.A. program for children's book writers.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-3-In this beginning reader, Ralph and Sarah are still going strong after almost 30 years together. True to character, the rotten cat doesn't like the healthy food that Sarah feeds him, so he raids the garbage cans in the alley. Of course, he becomes ill from his foraging and must be taken to the vet, where he is kept for observation. Lonesome for Sarah, he makes his way home, where he fixes himself some snacks. Ralph's suffering and Sarah's concern are palpable in a series of vivid illustrations that depict his worsening condition, as is their pleasure in being reunited. A great addition to the series.-Sandra Welzenbach, Villarreal Elementary School, San Antonio, TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
For kids anxious about a trip to the doctor, their favorite feline may offer some assistance, in Rotten Ralph Feels Rotten: A Rotten Ralph Rotten Reader by Jack Gantos, illus. by Nicole Rubel. After he feasts on a "green chicken wing," "furry fish" and a carton of "chunky chocolate milk" from a garbage can, Ralph needs to visit the vet. It isn't long before Ralph's rottenness is back in full swing. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Primary) If, as the saying goes, we are what we eat, then Rotten (""born to eat trash"") Ralph has an appropriate first name. He's also the perfect star for this cautionary tale about eating junk food. After a night of foraging in the neighborhood trash cans and gorging on treats such as a green chicken wing, blue cheesecake, and chunky chocolate milk, Ralph wakes up with a tummy ache and spends the next day at the doctor's. His subsequent conversion to ""healthy"" eating (he makes himself a banana split) is so Ralph-like that fans of the series will know this slight tempering of his basic hedonistic tendencies is not the signal for a personality makeover. Four short chapters give beginning readers appropriate starting and stopping places, and the illustrations not only parallel the text but also help define a few delicious phrases, such as ""squishy squid"" and ""furry fish,"" not often found in first-grade workbooks. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Gr. 1-3. Take one green chicken wing, add it to squishy squid, furry fish, and chunky chocolate milk, and you've got a recipe for a bellyache that makes swallowing a puzzle piece, as Curious George once did, seem health-conscious. One morning Rotten Ralph wakes up feeling ill, and a nibbled fish head on his pillow gives long-suffering Sarah all the information she needs: Have you been eating out of the trash can again? Off to the vet they go, where that bad red cat behaves horribly--burping in the doctor's face, for instance--even while feeling wretched. After the doctor solves his tummy trouble, he behaves even worse! The Magic-Marker intensity of Rubel's palette and the undulating quality of her lines are ideal for showing the quavery misery of nausea; in one particularly memorable spread, children see the suffering Ralph as puce-green and bloated, scavenged snacks floating around his insides. Beginning readers will gobble up this third installment of the Rotten Ralph Rotten Reader series; unlike Ralph, though, they'll have nothing to regret. --Jennifer Mattson Copyright 2004 Booklist