Poppy

Title: Poppy

Author: Avi

Illustrator: Brian Floca

Type: Novel

Grade Level: 3-5

Rating: 4 out of 5

The land around Dimwood forest is ruled by the owl, Mr. Ocax, who promises to protect the inhabiting mice as long as they remain obedient.  In order to save her giant mouse family, Poppy, sets out on a dangerous adventure and takes on the horrible Mr. Ocax.

I remember loving this book as a child and I loved it as much now that I’m older.  It has love, death, bravery, and humor.  It hit me emotionally.  Even though it is targeted for a younger audience I still found myself getting caught up in the plot.  While reading I did have one concern though concerning the emotional pulls of the book.  I was a little shocked at the death of characters wondering if that was appropriate for young children.  Then I remembered that as a 3^rd grader I read the book and the deaths did not upset me.  Yes, I was sad when brave Ragweed died but I was at an age that I could understand that death is part of life and could continue on reading without being too shaken up.  Now reflecting on this, I think it is actually good there is death and struggle in the novel because children deal with these things in real life and it is something they can relate to and must learn to handle.

This book would be good to incorporate in a unit on making predictions and educated guesses.  I read this book a long time ago so I didn’t remember much of it.  I found myself several times making predictions and using the context of the book to guess what would happen next.  Sometimes I was wrong and sometimes I was right and I think it would be an excellent example to read while teaching children about making predictions.