A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever

Frazee, M. (2008). A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever. New York: Harcourt, Inc. 9780152060206 During the summer, two boys (James and Eamon) spend the week with Eamon's grandparents while attending an outdoor day camp. While the boys are reluctant to enjoy some of the nature activities, they eventually find the perfect activity for them. This book was one of the Caldecott honor books for 2008. For me, the reason that this honor is deserved is because of the disconnect between the text and the illustrations which creates most of the irony and humor in the story. A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever captures a sense of childhood (and particularly boyhood) well. While the book could be used as a class read aloud, it'd probably be more effective as a small group or individual read aloud, so a teacher could take time with the book and point out the points where the text and illustrations are contrasted. Activities to do with the book: As a teacher, I would probably share this book with small groups of students before or after summer breaks and draw attention to the disagreement between the text and the illustrations and urge them to create their own stories and illustrations in response. A teacher could encourage students to consider and narrate and illustrate some of their own best weeks ever. Also since the book incorporates dialogue bubbles, a teacher could narrate the majority of the story, but have the students read the dialogue between the two boys. Favorite Quotes: "One hot summer day, James went on a long drive to Bill and Pam's house so he could go to a week of nature camp with his friend Eamon." "As the nature camp week went by, James and Eamon practically became one person. They did everything together in exactly the same way. To save time, Bill began calling them Jamon." "Then at last, James and Eamon finally got real busy with something...and it turned out to be the very best part of the best week ever." For more of my reviews, visit sjkessel.blogspot.com.

A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever Is a good book and is very funny. It amuses people all ages. My whole class laughed at it. The two boys are named James and Eamon and go to Eamon's grand parents. They want to stay at their house eat junk food and play video games, but Bill, James grandfather loves nature most of all in cold places with penguins so sends them to camp. In the book you never actually see them at camp, but only going to camp. A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever is full of humor and is definitely worth getting.

Marla Frazze's best picture book to date. A seamless blend of pictures and text. Laugh out loud funny and a great choice for ages 4-10. When you read the text, keep in mind that Frazee hand wrote every word in the book.

A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever is as merry and timeless as Robert McCloskey's Blueberries for Sal. James and Eamon, best friends, go to visit Eamon's grandparents, Bill and Pam, at the beach for a week during the summer. During the day, Bill has the boys attend nature camp as he loves everything to do with nature, especially cold places with penguins. The boys don't exactly love camp. As a matter of fact, you never actually see the boys at camp throughout the story. You only see Bill driving them to and from camp with the boys making sarcastic comments in the backseat (see the endpapers for some pictures of the boys at camp). James and Eamon would much rather stay at Bill and Pam's playing video games, eating ice cream icebergs and banana waffles, and turning their blow-up mattress into a trampoline. In other words, they don't want to do much of anything. Heck, they don't even want to change their shorts throughout the week. For James and Eamon, the best week ever consists of an air mattress in the downstairs bedroom, fun food, and the company of a best friend. It's just that simple. Now, where do I sign up for a vacation like that? For other reviews, please see my site.

James and his friend Eamon are going to Nature Camp for a week. It's a day camp near Eamon's grandparent's beach front house where the boys spend their week. If you want to see what they did at camp all you need to read are the endpapers which are snapshots of their time at camp. Their best week ever happened at Bill and Pam's (Eamon's grandparent's) house. Bill's a nice old guy who has traveled the world, loves penguins, and wants to talk about Antarctica all the time. The boys couldn't care less. Pam's cooking is better than anything the boys get at home, but probably because all she serves them is banana waffles. The boys stay in the basement, sleep on an inflatable mattress that serves as a fort, a trampoline, and a couch for their video game playing. They wear the same shorts all week long. James and Eamon are boys, true boys, marginally overseen by adults, living the summer that boys dream of. Their week over, the boys look out over the ocean at night, feeling something they can't articulate. But they know what to do: they collect driftwood, small rocks and mussel shells and assemble a miniature Antarctica complete with penguins on the deck. They hug Pam and Bill and hope they can go to Nature Camp again soon. Frazee knows boys. At the very least she knows these boys, and she knows that with boys everything is indirect. Bill asks them if they want to go see the penguin exhibit at the zoo, they boys say they'll think about it, and then they run away. They aren't trying to be rude, they're just boys doing what boys do, which is run away from conflict. I don't have a problem with this, because Frazee presents this with the same carefree attitude that boys bring with them. At the very end of their week when the boys don't know how to address their feelings of sorrow they do what boys do best: they build things, the express their feeling physically. I'm on the fence between calling this a good picture book and a great picture book. It's heart is in the right place, the humor is dry and authentic, but I'm left feeling like their best week ever needed a little more of an anchor, maybe one or two more activities to solidify their week. Their days are taken up with Nature Camp -- which is never shown, and I'm fine with that -- but I wish they'd had more time at Pam and Bill's to build or create or invent some week-long project that could mirror the building of their summer friendship. Will boys like it? Probably. Will they get it? Maybe. Does it matter? Nope.