St. Patrick's Day from the Black Lagoon by Mike Thaler

Synopsis:

Hubie's feeling the pinch of St. Patrick's Day—or at least he will be if he can't find something green to save him! But he's having trouble going green. Will recycling his homework and turning off the lights be enough? Full of hilarious illustrations, funny wordplay, and a never-ending stream of anxieties, this story joins Hubie as he searches for the end of a rainbow, hunts for four-leaf clovers, and has a potlick at the ice cream shop on St. Patrick's day.

My thoughts:
It is time to get into the holiday spirit for St. Patrick's Day next week.  This was one of the dollar books in my son's book order last month.  Because we have so many books I usually tell them they can pick out a book that is a dollar or two, because we all know it is fun to get a new book but it just gets to be way too expensive to pick out just anything.

While I've read the strictly picture book Black Lagoon books this is the first chapter book one I've read.  My son has a few of them and he is perfectly able to read them on his own so they just haven't been what we've picked to read as a read aloud.  I was worried that it being a chapter book meant it would take a while to read, but it is surprisingly short.  There is a picture on every page along with jokes and things in the margins.  It was actually quite quick to read, but entertaining at the same time.  My children were laughing out loud at some of the jokes and passages.  For example there is a page of green things not to eat like boogers, poison ivy and broccoli.  Of all things they thought it was a hoot that you weren't supposed to eat broccoli.  I for sure thought it would be the boogers that would get that reaction!  I think these chapter books would be good for developing confidence with readers who were ready for chapter books but were intimidated by a lot of text or pages.  It is more like a picture book for an older reader put into chapter form.

Product details:
64 pages

Genre: Humor & Funny Stories
Theme: School Life; Funny Books; St. Patrick's Day
Ages 7–9
Paperback Book

For years, the Black Lagoon picture books have delighted kids with their humorous look at how imagination can magnify fear of the unknown. Now Hubie has taken his worries to the chapter-book level, where readers can laugh at the hilarious disasters he's anticipating and find out what really happens when he gets there. Full of silly puns and wordplay—both in the text and in the accompanying illustrations, drawn to maximum hilarity by Jared Lee, who also illustrates the picture-book series—the Black Lagoon chapter books are a great way for kids to expand their reading horizons while laughing off their own anxieties.