Searching for Oliver K. Woodman [Hardcover]

Darcy Pattison (Author), Joe Cepeda (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2005 | Age Level: 5 and up | Grade Level: K and up

Imogene Poplar, Private Eye, is on a hot case. Her friend Oliver K. Woodman is missing, and she's tracking him across the glorious US of A. A baseball game in Green River, a rodeo in Seattle, a razzmatazz jazz blow in Chicago--there are clues and adventures in every city. But Imogene, like Oliver, is made of wood, so she needs help getting around. Friendly folks of all sorts guide her from South Carolina clear out to Alaska!

Where will Oliver's trail lead Imogene next? Read the letters. Follow the map. Then see if you can guess the elusive wooden man's next move.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

PreSchool-Grade 2–Another delightful offering about the famous American traveler introduced in The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman (Harcourt, 2003). Here, the wooden gentleman was heading toward the West Coast, but seems to have disappeared. Two months without a word prods his creator, Uncle Ray, and his niece, Tameka, to get help from Paige Hall, a newspaper reporter. After two more weeks without a sighting, Uncle Ray hires Imogene Poplar, private investigator, to track the fellow down. With the aid of concerned citizens, Imogene is close on Oliver's trail, but is always a bit too late to catch up with him. The travels take the pair separately through New York City; Hershey, PA; Chicago, and Sioux Falls, SD. Postcards, letters, and newspaper articles relate Imogene's experiences, while the full-spread, oil-over-acrylic paintings deftly convey the memorable events along the way. Humorous details throughout highlight the adventure, and the burgeoning romance between Uncle Ray and Paige makes an interesting subplot. Key cities and the direction of the journey are cited on the endpapers. The delightful conclusion neatly reunites the cast of characters, culminating in a most satisfying tale.–Maryann H. Owen, Racine Public Library, WI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

K-Gr. 2. Oliver K. Woodman is on the road again in this jaunty sequel to Pattison and Cepeda's earlier collaboration, The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman (2003). But this time Oliver is being shadowed by the indefatigable Imogene Poplar, a private detective made--like her quarry--of wood. As in the first book, children have an opportunity to follow the twists and turns on the respective journeys through a series of notes and letters sent by folks who have helped one or the other of the travelers. This makes for a highly episodic and, frankly, not very dramatic story, but Cepeda's witty, double-page pictures more than make up for deficiencies in the text, and the luscious colors in his oil palette look good enough to eat. Geography teachers will welcome the endpaper maps of the U.S. that chart Imogene and Oliver's journey. Michael Cart
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 5 and up
  
• Hardcover: 56 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books; First edition. edition (March 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0152051848
• ISBN-13: 978-0152051846
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 11.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,292,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Darcy Pattison is an Arkansas children's book author and writing teacher.

WRITING TEACHER:
In 1999, she created the Novel Revision Retreat, which she now teaches across the nation. For more, see http://www.darcypattison.com/speaking/ Books about how-to write include:

NOVEL METAMORPHOSIS: Uncommon Ways to Revise
PAPER LIGHTNING: Prewriting Activities to Spark Creativity and Help
Students Revise Better

CHILDREN'S BOOK AUTHOR:
Translated into eight languages, her four picture books and one middle grade novel, have been recognized for excellence by starred reviews, Book of the Year awards, state award lists and more. She is the 2007 recipient of the Arkansas Governor's Arts Award for Individual Artist for her work in children's literature. Titles include:

THE JOURNEY OF OLIVER K. WOODMAN
SEARCHING FOR OLIVER K. WOODMAN
19 GIRLS AND ME
THE RIVER DRAGON
THE WAYFINDER (Now in Kindle format!)

2011 TITLES:
THE SCARY SLOPES
PRAIRIE STORMS
11 WAYS TO RUIN A PHOTOGRAPH

2012 TITLES:
WISDOM THE ALBATROSS: SURVIVING THE JAPANESE TSUNAMI
DESERT BATHS

For more see darcypattison.com/about

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Third Graders at The Potomac School in McLean, VA, February 7, 2006

By 

When Pigs Fly (McLean, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Searching for Oliver K. Woodman (Hardcover)

Most of our eight- and nine-year-olds found this sequel to The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman a disappointment. Although they enjoyed the tale being told (again) through letters, postcards and newspaper articles, they thought this storyline was confusing with too many new characters to follow. They did love the oil-over-acrylic illustrations, and advise the second and third grade audience to pay close attention to the details to better understand the fast-paced plot. For the best travel-tracking, they recommend the reader become familiar with the cities and states mentioned, and refer often to the maps on the book's end pages. As an introduction to the recurring places and people, our young reviewers suggest starting with The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman. In fact, the reappearance of one particular character renewed their interest in this story and had our third graders hoping he'll be featured in another, more clever Woodman travelogue.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars 2 1/2 Confusing and Not Amusing, February 1, 2006

By 

M. Allen Greenbaum (California) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Searching for Oliver K. Woodman (Hardcover)

When young Tameka Schwartz, loses her friend Oliver K. Woodman, she and her uncle enlist the aid of reporter Paige Hall to find him. The reporter and Tameka's uncle, Raymond Johnson, send a wooden private investigator (Ms. Imogene Poplar, who is actually made of wood) to find the "local traveler of some renown," as Paige Hall calls him in her newspaper piece about the missing Woodman. Hall and Johnson place a letter in Poplar's bag asking that anyone who reads it write back to Hall, so that she can keep up with the investigation. Various people pick up and transport Poplar to various locations, and the style and content of their letters to Paige Hall reflect their various personalities, jobs, and locations, along with reporting either seeing Woodman or hearing of him.

This Griffin and Sabine-like gimmick works for awhile, but the appeal of various strangers spread about the country successively working to find Woodman (think "Six Degrees of Separation") is soon lost in a confusing story that neither establishes a convincing point of view nor conveys much humor or excitement. Paige Hill and Mr. Johnson, for example, laugh together when they write the letter for Poplar, as if they are planning a big joke on Tameka: Sending a wooden figure out on the road just to see (like a message in a helium-filled balloon) what responses they might get. Much of the problem lies in whether we are to take Oliver Woodman and Imogene Poplar as fantasy figures who actually do things and make friends, or as what they appear--carved wooden figures. The people who encounter Poplar seem to write about her as if she were real, projecting their own interests and needs onto her (e.g., the rodeo clown says she'd make a great rodeo clown, the jazz band director--in a phony bop "jazz" voice--writes that Ms. Imogene has a jazz ear), but the reader is left looking at one very wooden figure and wondering whether Tomeka really misses the missing Oliver K. Woodman. The relationship between Tameka and Woodman is just one of the missing elements here, and we never know what, if anything, Tameka is thinking while he's gone. There's an irrelevant and predictable subplot about Mr. Johnson and Paige Hall becoming a couple and marrying: These are the same two uninteresting people shown laughing and smiling as they set Poplar out on her quest for Tameka's lost "friend." The nicely done pictures are designed primarily for younger children, but the profusion of characters and narrative twists makes this generally inappropriate for them. A confused and confusing story, "Searching for..." can't even muster much excitement when the two wooden figures finally meet.