Oddhopper Opera: A Bug's Garden of Verses [Hardcover]

Kurt Cyrus (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 5 and up | Grade Level: 1 and up

Put an ear to the ground for the clicking, popping, snapping music of this garden grown wild. In verse as witty as it is buggy, Kurt Cyrus conducts a chirruping chorus of voices great and small. From a stinkbug trying (and failing) to hide itself to a cicada's struggle to escape its own skin to an ant's marathon dinner march and a frog's identity crisis, here is a garden teeming with down-to-earth fun for readers of every species--no matter how many legs they have!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bold, inventive artwork lends high spirits to Cyrus's (Slow Train to Oxmox) down-and-dirty view of a garden. Full-bleed pictures share the eye-popping scale and dimensionality of David Kirk's Miss Spider books, but the palette is realistic and the action reflects bug behavior. At first the impression is one of enthusiastic chaos. Poems appear without titles but have different narrators; occasionally, words loop around the pages like vines. But ample visual and verbal clues spell out distinct story lines and a temporal setting, progressing from summer to autumn. Early on, snails begin a race ("Give them a holler, a nod, and a nudge..../ Give them a minute, and see if they budge"); they reappear on subsequent spreads until, on the final page, Mrs. Molasses wins--a Pyrrhic victory, as an overripe tomato then falls on top of her ("SPLAT!/ That's that," the book concludes). One standout spread shows what appears to be a branch surrounded by a snake, but a closer look reveals a Katydid atop a walkingstick. Running gags include an overturned beetle who struggles to right himself; and ants who march along, shouting "BOINK" as they bump heads (a joke for budding entomologists who are aware that ants touch antennae to communicate). Many kids will like the gross-out factor in the attention paid to dung beetles as they feast; vegetables as they rot; bugs being consumed; etc. Throughout the seasons, this volume sustains its gleeful bounce. Ages 5-10.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Gr 2-4-"Once upon a garden rotten,/Twice forlorn and half forgotten-," a variety of beetles, earwigs, and other earth dwellers hid beneath the fetid vegetables, waiting for warmer weather. With a rhyming text and bug's-eye views of the towering vegetation, Cyrus follows insects, snails, frogs, and a snake through their spring awakening and summer foraging. Some of the animals eat the garden plants, some eat other creatures, and then there are the dung beetles: "`Papa, O Papa Bug, what will we eat?'/`It's gummy, it's yummy, it's dung! What a treat.'" The exaggerated size of many of the insects and ocher tones in the crowded pages lend a surreal quality to the scenes. The rolling rhyme features running accounts of several characters. Bummer Beetle is trapped on his back until the odor of Stinkbug finally motivates him to struggle upright. The snails have a race. "Give them a holler, a nod, and a nudge-/Give them a minute, and see if they budge." The garden is a messy melange, and the tone is one of mocking humor. In the end, as fall winds down the eating season, the snake makes a crunchy "munchie" of one of the snails, and a ripe tomato hits the ground, "SPLAT!/That's that." The slapstick account of the seasons runs a bit thin, but some children will enjoy the gross elements of slime and mold and the bug-eat-bug world.-Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 5 and up
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books; 1 edition (April 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0152022058
• ISBN-13: 978-0152022051
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 10 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #806,005 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightful ANT-ics!, March 30, 2001

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Oddhopper Opera: A Bug's Garden of Verses (Hardcover)

If you love children's poetry, or bugs, or snails, or frogs, or gardens, or humor, or fabulous art, you will enjoy this book. :-) Cyrus is not only a talented illustrator, but this book proves he is also a gifted writer. Here is part of the beginning:

Once upon a garden rotten, Twice forlorn and half forgotten...

Drip--drip--cold and wet. Winter isn't over yet.

Drip--drip--soaking, sopping, Always dripping, never stopping.

This is just beginning of the many rhythmic, funny, surprises crawling inside. A must see-- A must read-- A must own! Enjoy!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enter the Garden, If You Dare....., December 30, 2001

By 

Roz Levine - See all my reviews

This review is from: Oddhopper Opera: A Bug's Garden of Verses (Hardcover)

"Once upon a garden rotten,/Twice forlorn and half forgotten..." So begins Kurt Cyrus' marvelous collection of "a bug's garden of verses." As winter ends and spring blooms, all the creatures begin to wake up and come to the surface. Join aphids, bees, crickets, dung beetles, earwigs, and fleas, grubs, katydids, snakes, snails, frogs, stinkbugs, and many other creepy, crawly, slimy friends as they eat, work, and play. The seasons change and spring turns to summer, and then summer turns to autumn, when "Drip-drip-wet and muddy./Party's over, everybody." Mr Cyrus' exuberant and entertaining text is full of energy and motion, and wonderfully enhanced by his bold, vibrant and engaging artwork. These illustrations are a real feast for the eyes, and youngsters will enjoy poring over the pictures, and always finding something new and humorous each time they open the book. Perfect for little entomologists aged 6-10, Oddhopper Opera is a very creative and innovative look at the garden, and all who live there.

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful rhymes, wonderful illustrations that will bug you, July 25, 2007

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Oddhopper Opera: A Bug's Garden of Verses (Paperback)

"Wow! Mommy, it's a snake!" I heard those very words as a little one-year-old boy sat enthralled, flipping through pages of stunning pictures of lively bugs and of curving words crawling across the pages of Oddhopper Opera: A Bug's Garden of Verses.

Oddhopper Opera is a combination of rhyming verses and colorful drawings of bugs and animals. The child gets an insider's look into a bug's race in an unattended garden. Filled with bugs of all shapes and sizes, this garden provides the backdrop for the story line, that of a race among the bugs to get to the finish line. Its incorporation of poetry into an otherwise "science"- seeming children's book will broaden the imagination of any child.

Though there is a creative, wide range of vocabulary, it makes it a difficult independent read for a child (for example, "Once up on a garden rotten, Twice forlorn and half forgotten").

Oddhopper Opera doesn't shy away from the facts of life, apparent in some of these example lines "dung balls rolling - move `em out," "Feeling kind of bloated," "'Papa, O Papa Bug, what will we eat?' "`It's gummy, it's yummy, it's dung! What a treat!'"

Regarding format, some of the words follow the twists and curves of the pictures, making it a challenge for a child of ages 5 to 10 to read independently, but a fun journey to read with, or to, a child.

The intriguing mix of poetry, stunning pictures, bugs and action-filled pages will keep children's attention and increase curiosity about what's going on in their own backyards.

Armchair Interviews says: If bugs bug you, or you love bugs, this book will bring you down to their level of living.