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Summary
Summary
A 2009 Caldecott Honor Book
When James and Eamon go to a week of Nature Camp and stay at Eamon's grandparents' house, it turns out that their free time spent staying inside, eating waffles, and playing video games is way more interesting than nature. But sometimes things work out best when they don't go exactly as planned.
This Caldecott Honor-winning book is a moving and hilarious celebration of young boys, childhood friendships, and the power of the imagination, where Marla Frazee captures the very essence of summer vacation and what it means to be a kid.
Author Notes
Marla Frazee was born in Los Angeles, California on January 16, 1958. She received a bachelor of fine arts at Art Center College of Design in 1981. After graduating from college, she worked for various companies in advertising, educational publishing, toys, games, and magazines. In 1990, she illustrated her first book, World Famous Muriel and the Magic Mystery, written by Sue Alexander. She has also illustrated The Seven Silly Eaters by Mary Ann Hoberman, Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers, Harriet, You'll Drive Me Wild! by Mem Fox, the Clementine chapter book series by Sara Pennypacker, and Stars by Mary Lyn Ray. In 2003, she wrote and illustrated Roller Coaster. Her other works include The Boss Baby, Walk On!, and Santa Claus the World's Number One Toy Expert. She received a 2009 Caldecott Honor for A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever and a 2010 Caldecott Honor for All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Frazee (Roller Coaster) salutes grandparents and slyly notes children's diversions in this breezy tale of "the best week ever." After Eamon enrolls in nature camp, he spends nights with his grandparents, Bill and Pam, at their beach cottage. Eamon's friend James joins the sleepover, and although the text describes James as "very sad" when his mother drives away, a cartoon shows him exuberantly waving "Bye!" Humorous contradictions arise between the hand-lettered account ("Bill handed them each a pair of binoculars and a list of birds to look for. On the way home, the boys reported their findings") and voice-bubble exchanges between the boys (Eamon, training the lenses on James: "His freckles are huge." James: "Yeah, and his tongue is gross"). Bill tries to interest the boys in a museum exhibit on penguins; the inseparable friends ("To save time, Bill began calling them Jamon") show no enthusiasm yet energetically build "penguins" from mussel shells. Frazee's narrative resembles a tongue-in-cheek travel journal, with plenty of enticing pencil and gouache illustrations of the characters knocking about the shoreline. Like The Hello Goodbye Window, Frazee's story celebrates casual extended-family affection, with a knowing wink at the friends' dismissal of their elders' best-laid plans. Ages 6-9. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Primary) In this tongue-in-cheek story, Frazee's text plays straight man to her comic illustrations, and the clever interplay between the two fuels the book's humor. James and Eamon are staying with Eamon's grandparents, Bill and Pam, so they can attend a nature day-camp. Though the boys tolerate camp, the real action happens during their unstructured time at Bill and Pam's beach house. In fact, the illustrations effectively ignore camp activities, relegating those scenes to the endpapers. While the earnest narrative offers one version of events, the energetic illustrations and sound-bite speech balloons provide a boys'-eye view of "the best week ever." Highlights include zoning out in front of the TV, playing video games (or, as the text describes it, practicing "quiet meditation"), and camping on an air mattress in the downstairs bedroom with a legion of stuffed animals. Bill and Pam remain mostly in the background: Pam comes into focus when she's offering ice cream for snack and banana waffles for dinner; nature-lover Bill pops up periodically to share his interest in Antarctica or to suggest a trip to the museum to see the penguin exhibit. (Eamon: "Do you want to go?" James: "No.") This week, and this story, belongs to the boys, which is what makes both week and story so successful. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Frazee offers another riotous story that plays deadpan words off of sly, subversive pictures. Best friends James and Eamon head to Eamon's grandparents' house on the Florida coast, where they will attend a nature day camp. The straightforward words describe their trips to camp and then earnest nature talks with grandparents. The gleeful pencil-and-gouache illustrations, filled with dialogue bubbles, tell a different story: the boys play computer-game marathons, create tents from their mattresses, and enjoy other raucous indoor fun while generally ignoring the great outdoors. But on their final night, the friends discover a world of natural fun on the moonlit shore. A few of the pictures' winking references may hit more with adults than with kids, but plenty of children will see themselves in the high-energy scenes, particularly when the friends cheerfully disregard educational activities suggested by well-meaning grown-ups. Surprisingly few picture books celebrate the close friendship of two boys, and this boisterous story helps fill that gap.--Engberg, Gillian Copyright 2008 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
PreS-K-James and Eamon spend a week at Eamon's grandparents' beach house. The boys go to nature camp during the day and delight Bill and Pam (the grandparents) at night with their antics. Bill makes an earnest attempt to interest the young boys in his own hobby-studying Antarctica and penguins. He wears a penguin shirt and brings out maps and globes, but it appears that James and Eamon are not listening. Frazee brings out the typical energy of a couple of boys who may scoff at nature and seem to prefer watching TV, but it is through her artful illustrations that readers catch glimpses of just how savvy and creative these kids can be. The youngsters' circular cartoon faces are distinguishable only because of their small tufts of hair-one curly, the other straight. Endpapers depict a humorous variety of drawn photos that could have been taken during the week. A penguin craft is explained on the final end flap. This intergenerational story will elicit howls of laughter and requests for repeated readings.-Blair Christolon, Prince William Public Library System, Manassas, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
James and Eamon spend a week with Bill and Pam, Eamon's grandparents, while they take in a week of nature camp--a week that turns out to be "the best week ever." A deadpan text narrates the events of the week, from the obligatory nature hikes and sleeping on an inflatable mattress downstairs to Bill's well-meaning attempts to engage them in wildlife study and Pam's great cooking. Frazee's hilarious round-headed cartoons romp across the page in snort-inducing counterpoint, abetted by the occasional speech balloon ("I think it should be called Sit-Around-Camp."). What emerges is a complete portrait of two thoroughly modern boys who watch TV, get messy, resist both nature and self-improvement--and still get won over by the spell of the great outdoors. The genius here is not that the boys finally get outside in the end; it's that their joy in being together is celebrated equally whether they're annihilating each other in a video game or building a replica of Antarctica on Bill and Pam's dock. As respectful of kid sensibilities and priorities as it's possible for an adult to achieve. (Picture book. 5-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
