Customer Reviews

Grump Groan Growl

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The style of the lettering and the background images are perfect for illustrating a foul mood. Written in a manner suggesting that they were drawn with a wide paintbrush, the letters give the appearance of having been spoken by a very unhappy person. The figures of living creatures are drawn in a minimalist style that appears primitive; some of them reminded me of what you see in ancient cave drawings.
The point of the story is that when you are overcome with dark feelings the best thing to do is to ride them out, let things pass until the grumpiness goes away. There are only 57 words in this book, yet in combination with the illustrations manage to tell a complete and valuable story about living with your bad moods. This is a good book for young children.

Great for any kid who has ever felt angry!

Let me preface by saying that we were already hooked on Chris Raschka's book Yo! Yes? (Scholastic Bookshelf) in which he is able to express an awful lot content in very few simple, small words. Similar idea here - bell hooks's poem "Grump, Groan, Growl" is a simple poem describing how anger feels, and it's easy enough for a toddler to understand, but she doesn't talk down to the reader or try to moralize about appropriate behavior. It's modern poetry and it captures a universal emotion (and how to control and redirect it) quite eloquently.

In remarkably few words, bell hooks (yeah, that's a person's name, even though there's no capital letters and both names are nouns for everyday objects - it threw me, too - maybe it's a poet thing. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah!) bell hooks expresses the need to embrace, not squelch, powerful emotions, but also not allow them to control you. Passionate intensity is a *good* thing, if one learns how to modulate and control it. It's a fairly powerful idea, really, that of accepting powerful emotions as valid, allowing ourselves to feel them, yet not letting them overwhelm and emotionally flood us. Don't suppress the emotions, learn to master your response to them so they don't control you.

There are many ways to "let those feelings be. Just let them pass. Just go inside. And let it slide" -- learning to handle intense emotions gracefully (rather than by lashing out) is a pretty useful skill at any age. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that bell hook's didn't necessarily have kids in mind when she wrote this. The poem itself would be equally appropriate on the first slide of a corporate power point presentation on "Anger Management" as it would as a book in the waiting room of a child (or adult's) psychologist's office, or as a conversation starter in a philosophy or inter-personal communications class, or on the bookshelf of a cognitive scientist, or (in this particular book with Raschka's art) in any preschool or kindergarten room. How cool is that?

Now, about Chris Raschka's part. I picked up this book because I so thoroughly enjoyed his earlier book "Yo! Yes?" which is written in huge letters, frequently with just one or two words per page. (Brevity is the soul of wit.) Like hooks in this book, he expresses a great deal with remarkably few simple words, so both are great early reader books, although they aren't advertised as such. The words are no more complex than what you find in many very early reader books, the most complicated words being ones with silent "e" like "inside" "outside" and "slide" - and maybe "groan" because you don't pronounce the "a". (The text in "Yo! Yes?" is even easier - it's a GREAT first book for a beginning reader.) If you think you're going to lose your mind if you have to suffer through one more insipid book about a dog and a frog on a log or a cat named Matt, this is for you.

Other reviewers commented that the pictures are "ugly" and unappealing. Well, yeah, I think that was kind of the *point* guys - to visually express the feeling of being somewhat out of control. Didn't we get past the bit about all art having to be "more beautiful than real life" about a hundred years ago? C'mon! True, the illustrations in this book don't look like Jan Brett's or even Maurice Sendak's. I like both of them, too, but this is different - it's SUPPOSED to be different. (For that matter, "Where the Wild Things Are," although quite wonderful, does scare pants off some little kids.)

This book isn't just "well-intentioned," it's very well-executed, too, IMHO.

Hooks, Bell. Grump Groan Growl. Illustrated by Chris Raschka. Hyperion Books for Children. 2008.

This well-intentioned but primarily unappealing picture book works to capture the feel of a child experiencing a dark mood. Mostly muddy illustrations accompany a word or word phrase: one double-spread shows the word "Grump" on one side against a background of tan and red across from a figure that looks like a monster, its mouth down-turned. Another double-spread displays the phrase, "Bad Mood on the prowl" splashed in black paint against some bright colors, a vaguely suggested figure is outlined in black. As the angry mood becomes more controlled, the figure of the child becomes more recognizable. Offer readers instead, Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are (Harper and Row, 1963) and Molly Bang's When Sophie Gets Angry...Really, Really Angry (Blue Sky Press, 1999).

Grump, Groan, Growl is a beautifully illustrated book and a freeing book for expressing one's emotions. The colors communicate the feelings. I gave it as a gift to a four-year-old, but I think the book seemed a little scary to him. I do think, however, that he could identify with the feelings. The child's mom is a big fan of bell hooks so the book was a gift to her as well as to him!

Pair with "Alexander and the horrible...", "My many colored days", & "Sometimes I'm Bombaloo".

Sometimes kids have their cranky pants on, and it's OK to feel that way, but not so OK to act on it. They need to figure out how to acknowledge their growly moods and independently conquer them. These books help.

No imagination, no talent evident here at all either in words or art (if you can call it that).