The Adventures of Arnie the Doughnut Bowling Alley Bandit by Laurie Keller

I adore Arnie the Doughnut, but most importantly my students LOVE Arnie the Doughnut.  For the last couple of years students do a book trailer on a picture book they love.  Every year at least two pick Arnie the Doughnut.  One year one student went the extra mile and brought in a chocolate sprinkle covered doughnut to film.

When I found out the Laurie Keller was going to share more of her humorous writing with us I was thrilled.  As most of us know reading teachers are notoriously non-thorough readers.  I say this because I originally went into The Bookies to buy it only to discover that it hadn’t been released.  I ordered and it came in and then sat on my TBR stack.  I took my niece to a swim meet last Friday, so I took The Adventures of Arnie the Doughnut Bowling Alley Bandit with me to read while I waited.  My parents and nephew arrived as the meet began.  Levi found the copy and that was that. 

Levi opting out of swim meet.

He sat reading it to himself and aloud to my dad.  As a new first grader he will have NO problems with fluency.  He was so excited to learn what a whoopee cushion is.  I’m sure his teacher will be thrilled.

The new Arnie book is an illustrated chapter book.  What is important about Laurie’s books is her use of multi-level texts.  There is the direct text that is easy for the reader to follow. Then, the reader has to notice everything else on the page because the tiny bubble speech might be crucial to the story, or there is a whole page comparing the weight of the doughnut to a bowling ball with Albert Einstein looking on saying “Impossible!”.

As with the Lunch Lady series I foresee begging, “borrowing”, and long lines of students waiting to read this book.  I can’t wait for the next one.