Review by Booklist Review
Ages 4-8. In these wild nonsense verses and pictures, the one-eyed monster may be a curmudgeonly giant, but he's also a part of every preschooler at play, whether he's gorging on bowls of roasted troll "prepared in special slime" or scrubbing his face with weasel grease. Zelinsky extends the physicalness of Prelutsky's words with gory, wonderfully detailed double-page spreads in watercolor and pen and ink that resemble the grotesque crowds of Brueghel the Elder, as well as the wild things of Sendak. From the time the ogre wakes up in the morning with his pets ("My buzzard pecks my belly / Till I fling it from the bed"), each page celebrates a part of his awful and joyful day. One of the best is the ogre's visit to a restaurant, where he not only gobbles all the food but also the silverware, the plates, and the tablecloth. --Hazel Rochman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In a starred review, PW called this collection of light verse "a divinely wretched celebration of subversity, with possibilities for gross-outs from sunup to sundown." Ages 6-up. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-5-This collection of 18 witty poems chronicles a day in the life of Awful Ogre. He towers over buildings and ordinary folk with his carpet of grass-green hair; red, bulbous nose; and single, large, green-and-yellow eye. He doesn't sound real cute, but underneath he's one swell guy. In "Awful Ogre's Breakfast," Prelutsky has fun with the normal breakfast routine. The spread depicts the ogre leaning back on his chair, gazing into his bowl of, yes, scream of wheat, complete with tongues and teeth. Children are sure to memorize Prelutsky's inventive verse and will avidly search the illustrations for their hidden jokes. Take for instance "Awful Ogre's TV Time," in which his favorite channel is the Chopping Network. In "Awful Ogre Dances," Prelutsky's prose stretches across the bottom half of the spread in perfect accompaniment to Zelinsky's dozen frames of Awful Ogre lithely (honestly) gliding across the top half. "I dance with abandon/Bravura, and zest,/I carom off boulders/And beat on my chest./I pirouette wildly/And leap into space/With power, panache,/And unparalleled grace." Even though Awful Ogre claims to be the awfulest of all, he remains awfully appealing throughout his rants and misadventures. Consider purchasing an extra copy-just in case he is checked out for an awfully long time.-Lisa Gangemi Krapp, Middle Country Public Library, Centereach, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Intermediate) Prelutsky follows Awful Ogre through his day, allowing readers to discover how he gets out of bed (""My rats attack me as I rise / But scatter when I roar. / I boot my sweet tarantula / Across the stony floor""); grooms himself (""I rinse my mouth with onion juice / And dab some on my chin, / I rub my cheeks with dragon blood / To uglify my skin""); entertains his great-grandnephew (""He's apt to catch me unawares / And launch a sneak attack. / He bops me soundly on the bean, / Of course I bop him back""); and goes to bed (""My awful day is ending, / I've ranted, roared, and raved. / At best I've been unpleasant / And greatly misbehaved""). Despite his size and fondness for the grosser side of life, Awful Ogre is not without artistic abilities. He dances, is musically inclined, tends his garden of ""carnivorous roses"" and ""overblown mold,"" and writes sentimental love letters to an ogress: ""I treasure the claws / On your fingers and toes, / Your big bloodshot eye, / And your pendulous nose."" Each of the eighteen double-page spreads is delicately framed, most often with tiny objects, such as repeating mice, spiders, and storm clouds, from the larger illustrations. These fragile figures contrast with the high-spirited scenes of a bowl of Scream of Wheat yelling at breakfast; logs, complete with hairy toes, roasting in the fireplace; and Awful himself snuggling up to a prickly cactus as he turns in for the night. Zelinsky gives Awful an exuberant bravado that blends well with his proud, confident voice: ""When elves and gnomes encounter me, / They often shriek, 'Grotesque!' / I bow with magnanimity / And murmur, 'Statuesque!'"" (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In 18 poems, grisly enough to delight the taste for the macabre in any child, Prelutsky takes the Awful Ogre through his predictably awful day. From early rising to evening rest, everything that is grotesque is Ogre's idea of grand . . . breakfast of "ghoul on toast," a beloved ogress with greasy green tresses, a garden of well-sharpened thorns and poisonous plants, a precious collection of bones. The rhymes are wickedly rich in vocabulary (his weeds are scrofulous) and wordplay (at TV time, Ogre adores "The Chopping Channel"), and the scansion rarely goes wrong. As depicted gleefully by Prelutsky and Zelinsky, this ogre is a huge, lovable innocent who is unaware of any offense he might give. He seems not to notice that his left nostril houses a skunk. Happily, the illustrations are as blissfully unfettered by the demands of good taste as the poems. They command repeated and close scrutiny, containing ironic humor never mentioned in the text (the limbs on the fire have feet and most of Ogre's household appointments are satisfyingly monstrous). Far different from the painterly style we associate with the Caldecott-winning Zelinsky, his looser style reveals a surprisingly fiendish sense of humor with only the formal borders to remind you of his other renowned works. Of course, even the borders are filled with various forms of unpleasantness. Programmers, let yourselves go, this is a dramatic reader's delight and you'll find your listeners in your lap, not trembling with fear but with laughter, and clamoring to get a closer look at the illustrations. A bad day has never been a better romp. (Poetry. 6-10)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
