The Big Cheese of Third Street [Hardcover]

Laurie Halse Anderson (Author), David Gordon (Illustrator)

Book Description

Little Benny Antonelli is so small that when the kids on Third Street play keep-away, he gets to be the ball. And that's no fun. (Well, at least not for Benny.)

But the annual Third Street Block Party is right around the corner. And that's where the littlest Antonelli's gonna prove that a kid no bigger than a peanut butter sandwich has what it takes to be...

The Big Cheese of Third Street.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Little Benny Antonelli is "no bigger than a peanut butter sandwich," a real handicap on Third Street, which is peopled with "bus-sized women," "skyscraper-sized men" and "kids taller than streetlights." Newcomer Gordon accentuates the contrast, recording the scene from Benny's perspective on the street as shoes, feet and wheels come at him, the urban skyline rising up to the top of the spread. The object of many a prank (he's taped to a toy airplane, his "worst sister" pins him to the clothesline "along with the Big Antonelli underpants"), Benny has only one defense: to climb street signs, fire escapes, drainpipes and the like. He hits bottom when his aunt mistakes him for a tomato and tosses him into the salad. But he finally gets a chance to shine at his block party's greased pole climb, where he wins the prize: cheese. Anderson's (Speak) urban tall tale is a hoot, from her cheeky take on the woes of runt-hood to her pliant use of exaggeration and sassy street talk ("You got your games, you got your food, you got your music," describes the block party). Gordon picks up on the sly humor and fills his sturdy, uncomplicated cityscapes with comic touches, from the barrel-chested men in their sleeveless undershirts to the looming perspectives that help magnify the scale for diminutive Benny. Ages 5-8.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grades 1-3--Young Benny Antonelli is no bigger than a peanut-butter sandwich, while the rest of his family and their friends are the size of buses and skyscrapers. Big people toss him around like a ball, make him walk a gigantic dog, sweep him up with the trash, and put him in a salad thinking that he's a tomato. All the while, the child looks scared, sad, and angry; he feels "Lower than pigeon poop." Then, at the annual block party, the big folks are unable to climb a greased pole and retrieve the cheese from the top. One spread shows them sliding down and falling off-one fellow is nearly mooning readers. The young hero then climbs the pole, recovers the prize, and becomes, "badda-boom, badda-bing.-The Big Cheese of Third Street." This book aims to teach that size doesn't matter and that the little guy can triumph in the end, but the execution is unsuccessful. The stylized, blocky illustrations border on scary, and the tone of the text is flip and smart-alecky, "Geeeesh, what did you think this story was about?" The language throughout imitates the vernacular speech one might expect to hear in sections of Brooklyn, NY. A disappointing effort from this versatile author.

Genevieve Gallagher, New York Public Library

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing; 1 edition (March 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689824645
• ISBN-13: 978-0689824647
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 9.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,436,648 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Laurie Halse (rhymes with "waltz") Anderson pretended she was a polar bear when she walked to school through the snow of Syracuse, New York. As a little girl, she would pound away at her father's old typewriter for hours, writing newspaper columns, stories, and letters. She loved watching her father write poetry and reading the funnies on the floor of his office. Laurie fell in love with words when her second-grade teacher taught her how to write haiku. Her favorite book is the dictionary, which is a good thing because she is a terrible speller. She tried to read every book in her school library, a heavenly place. She loves librarians! One of her favorite books was Heidi. This led to curiosity about foreign cultures. As a senior in high school, she was an American Field Service exchange student to Denmark, where she lived on a pig farm. She skipped both her prom and graduation ceremonies and had a great time there. She can still speak Danish.

Laurie Halse Anderson never intended to be an author. At Georgetown University, she majored in foreign languages and linguistics. She hit the real world with no idea of what kind of work she wanted to do. She tried everything, including cleaning banks, milking cows and working as a stockbroker. She hated all of it. Working as a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer was a slight improvement, but she eventually quit to write books. After eight long, rejection-filled years, she has finally qualified as an overnight success.

Laurie's books for children and teenagers have attracted a lot of attention. Her first novel, Speak, was a National Book Award Finalist, a Michael L. Printz Honor book, a New York Times bestseller, and an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults. Publisher's Weekly, called Speak "a stunning first novel," in which Ms. Anderson "uses keen observations and vivid imagery to pull readers into the head of an isolated teenager." Speak has been translated into sixteen foreign languages, including Chinese and Catalan. In 2005, the movie version was released. In addition to novels, Laurie writes chapter books for elementary age children and picture books for the pre-school set. She received the Margaret A. Edwards Award, given by the American Library Association for significant and lasting achievement in young adult literature, in 2009.

Laurie lives in Northern New York with her husband, Scot, and their dog, Kezzie. Scot designed and built a writing cottage for Laurie, where she writes daily. Along with writing, she enjoys gardening, running and hanging with her family.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars My little guy likes the big cheese, February 20, 2009

By 

D. Schultz (Naples, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Big Cheese of Third Street (Hardcover)

My little son, nearly four, really enjoys this book. I checked it out from the library and he wants to read it nearly every night. (It's now on his Amazon wish list.)

The story is actually pretty fun to read... I haven't gotten tired of it. More than any of his other books, it's written in such a way that I easily slip into the characters while reading. I find myself automatically reading it with exaggerated emphasis and slipping into a cheesy New Yorker accent. Highly recommended.