Thursday, June 26, 2014

Jasper John Dooley is a Fun Character!

Jasper John Dooley is a fun character and I'd love to see him meet Clementine.  There are three books about Jasper John Dooley and each one is filled with honest to good fun.  

In the first book Jasper John Dooley Star of the Week, Jasper is excited to be the featured student for a whole week.  Unfortunately, his sharing gets over shadowed by Ori, a classmate who has a new baby sibling.  In an attempt to create his own sibling, he creates one using wood and nails which results in a mix of reactions.  Luckily, the teacher Ms. Tosh is creative enough accept the wooden brother, Earl into a science experiment about living and nonliving.  Jasper meets Ori's new baby and has many realizations about life with a new baby which changes his own thinking.

In the second book Jasper John Dooley Left Behind, Jasper is devastated his grandmother is leaving him to go on a vacation cruise to Alaska.  His mind is preoccupied with her absence and several things happen; he staples a story to himself while publishing it at school, he and Ori try to build a cruise ship out of wood, he has to spend time with a new sitter instead of his grandmother, he gets in trouble at school for doing a Very Dangerous Thing, and brings home the class hamster who escapes for a bit.  One of the things I like about Jasper John Dooley is the realistic every day adventures or mishaps that occur.  

In the the book Jasper John Dooley Not in Love, Jasper spends the book trying to balance his guy friends and be kind to Isabel a classmate.  They have a couple of playdates together and he likes jumping on her trampoline but it gets uncomfortable when Isabel is convinced she is in love with him.  In the end, Jasper figures out a way to show Isabel he isn't as interesting as she thinks and saves a friend from being her next victim.

In all three books, Jasper John Dooley is a creative boy who can figure out quirky ways to solve some normal day to day life problems.  I think he will be a perfect addition to my classroom library.

No comments:

Post a Comment