Potato Joe [Hardcover]

Keith Baker (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 3 and up | Grade Level: P and up

This fresh adaptation of the classic "One Potato, Two Potato" nursery rhyme is a counting adventure and rollicking good time rolled into one. Spunky leader Potato Joe and his nine spuds pals count up to ten and back down again, all while playing games and meeting up with other garden friends.

With its playful tone and hilariously expressive potatoes, Potato Joe is a spud-tastically fun read-aloud, and a perfect companion to Keith Baker's previous nursery rhyme interpretations, Big Fat Hen and Hickory Dickory Dock. (20080616)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

PreSchool-Grade 1—This picture book is based on the familiar nursery rhyme, "One Potato, Two Potato." One by one, 10 potatoes pop out of the ground to experience silly, unrelated things: a big black crow flying over them, being covered in snow, a rodeo. Two fruits, Tomato Flo and Watermelon Moe, join the fun briefly before the potatoes roll back to the garden and "Tally-ho!" into the ground. The fuzzy-edged, childlike illustrations were done in Adobe Photoshop and complement the bouncy tone of the text. This will be fun to share, and even young children will soon have the rhyme committed to memory.—Lee Bock, Glenbrook Elementary School, Pulaski, WI
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Review

"This book gets sillier and sillier without ever forsaking its low-key cool, and that's no small potatoes. Readers may think they're in for a rehash of the classic counting rhyme 'One potato, two potato, three potato four.' But Potato Joe and his fellow spuds quickly prove that theirs is no meat-and-potatoes affair; in fact, if it can rhyme with potato, they're all over it: playing tic-tac-toe, spotting a big black crow, holding a rodeo, flirting with saucy Tomato Flo." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"This book gets sillier and sillier without ever forsaking its low-key cool, and that''s no small potatoes. Readers may think they''re in for a rehash of the classic counting rhyme ''One potato, two potato, three potato four.'' But Potato Joe and his fellow spuds quickly prove that theirs is no meat-and-potatoes affair; in fact, if it can rhyme with potato, they''re all over it: playing tic-tac-toe, spotting a big black crow, holding a rodeo, flirting with saucy Tomato Flo." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

(Publishers Weekly )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 3 and up
  
• Hardcover: 40 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books; 1 edition (June 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0152062300
• ISBN-13: 978-0152062309
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 9.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #671,303 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

KEITH BAKER is the author-illustrator of many beloved picture books, including Little Green, Hide and Snake, and Quack and Count. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This SPUD'S for ALL AGES, July 23, 2008

By 

Gwynne C. Spencer (Mancos, Colorado) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Potato Joe (Hardcover)

This book will grow on you like....potatoes and dirt! It's a take off on the old counting-out rhyme (which is not in the text, so you might want to brush up on it before you read this book out loud to kids, which you will love doing). Like his other titles, Hickory Dickory Dock and Big Fat Hen, this one takes old rhymes to new places and features nice big print for little readers to enjoy. Potato Joe (who has brown eyes, just two of them) comes up with new uses for his potato-pals: tic tac toe and some snow covered tiers then a rodeo with some do-si-do action. How about a tall potato pile (would the Brits call it a rugby scrum?), a celebration of roundness with Tomato Flo and Watermelon Moe and a final journey back to the garden, back to the rich cool dirt, "where we potatoes grow". This would pair nicely with Two Old Potatoes and Me by John Coy or Cynthia de Felice's One Potato Two Potato (which is actually a "little pot that wouldn't stop" story) and then engage kids in a potato patch activity planting potatoes. As a food lesson, it would be great fun to introduce purple potatoes, fingerling potatoes, Yukon golds and little round reds, but Potato Joe looks like a russet to me. You could use this to do a counting lesson, some art, some history of potatoes, even ordinals and cardinal numbers using Potato Joe and his pals. The endpapers of the book are a velvety rich brown, the pages feature enticing brown dirt under a sky that changes page by page from green to purple to blue to yellow over and over until the final scene when the welcoming brown dirt takes over the page. Keith Baker, who is a very tall artist and writer, visits schools and libraries. His website, keithbaker.com has all the details. And we must mention that no potatoes were harmed in the making of this book!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Attention Spudophiles, July 15, 2008

By 

Spudman (Pasadena, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Potato Joe (Hardcover)

This is a cute little book full of potatoes, spuds of various sizes and expressiveness. The one potato, two potato ryhme is retold with some additional long o rhymes added by the author. The artistry is first rate.
Only the multiple spellings of the long o sound would pose any problem.
It's a shame the spellings aren't consistent, but that's the nature of our language.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars My 7 Month Old Loves It, May 2, 2009

By 

A. C. Johnson (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Potato Joe (Hardcover)

I checked this out of the library for my 6 month old. Once I got the hang of how to read it right, my 6 month old loved it. The pictures are very simple, but each picture also has a small ant hidden somewhere in the picture and this will make the book more appealing for older kids. My main complaint is that the book is so darned huge. Good for classroms ... bad for lying in bed. After returning the book to the library, simply reciting the text of the book to my son is enough to put a smile on his face.