Learning to Listen with Heart: What is The Classroom Bookshelf? Each Monday, The Classroom Bookshelf posts an entry on a recently published book for children or young adults.
Picture Books Dealing With Tough Topics
Each entry includes three sections: Our goal is to identify books that can be used in K-8 classrooms in a variety of ways. We invite you to explore the many entries on this blog by either by browsing past entries titles that intrigue you using the archive navigation tool below or by using the SEARCH field in the right sidebar. You can search the entries by keyword, curriculum topic, genre, or author. What was it about Ben Rides On that first attracted me?
Follow the Author
Maybe it was the use of line. Or cool visual pieces, like the solitary, dejected Ben walking down a school hallway, or the oversized underside of his shoe as he runs to a mysterious sound.
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I love how the angles and shots for lack of a better word of the characters move about constantly. The best image in the book, bar none, is the moment when Ben looks down upon his now helpless opponent and you get a kind of Adrian-eye-view of the face distorted by an evil grin.
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Terrible, is clearly the outcome Ben would have most wished upon Adrian. Terrible, is a wonderful thing. The final shot in the book, for example, is a touch baffling. Maybe through a peephole in a door?
BEN RIDES ON by Matt Davies , Matt Davies | Kirkus Reviews
Are we to assume that Adrian is now hiding and waiting for Ben to find the bike? Coyote-like dangling off a cliff of Adrian. A comic strip is like a picture book shortened within an inch of its life. It demands that the writer know how to synthesize a story into only three panels.
Review of the Day: Ben Rides On by Matt Davies
An editorial cartoon, by contrast, is an even shorter affair, needing to present all the pertinent information in a single point. You would think then that editorial cartoonists would then be at a distinct disadvantage to their funny pages friends when they start writing picture books, but we know that is not the case. A star from Kirkus. You bet it is.
This witty and wonderful story revolves around Ben, Adrian, and Ben's bike and has a lot to say—in sometimes delightfully sophisticated words—about bullying, charity, and redemption. Davies's cartoons are simply the bees' knees. Facial expressions, gestures, postures, perspectives: Horn Book Editorial cartoonist Davies puts his wild cartooning imagination to good use in this book about a boy, his bicycle, and a bully.
Only Ben can rescue him. The surprise twists at the end including a great fake-out bring a fresh and welcome perspective to the bully-changes-his-stripes story. Accelerated Reader Level 3.