How I Spent My Summer Vacation (Dragonfly Books)

How I Spent My Summer Vacation (Dragonfly Books)
by Mark Teague

How I Spent My Summer Vacation (Dragonfly Books)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Mark Teague
Brand: Dragonfly Books
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1997-07-08
ISBN: 0517885565
Number of pages: 32
Publisher: Dragonfly Books
Product features:
  • ISBN13: 9780517885567
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Book Reviews of How I Spent My Summer Vacation (Dragonfly Books)

Book Review: For that warm & fuzzy feeling, read this book to your child.
Summary: 5 Stars

HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION by Mark Teague is a 31-page medium format book. There are 31 illustrations. Nine of the illustrations are panoramas, taking up two entire pages.

The plot concerns a boy reading his school paper, regarding his summer vacation, to the class. The illustration shows a desert landscape materializing on the center of the blackboard in the schoolroom. The next illustration shows the boy actually walking on the desert, but still clutching his term paper, and still reading the paper. Along come some cowboys. The cowboys capture the boy, but they are benign cowboys. They give the boy a kid-sized cowboy outfit to wear, and the illustrations show the boy getting lessons in lassoing and making campfires. The landscape contains cacti and mesas. The storyline segues, in part, back to the boy's real-life situation, and it shows the cowboys having a conventional picnic in a grassy back yard. At the picnic, there is a 20th century barbeque grill, and there are 20th century style hot dogs, and slices of watermelon. At any rate, the cattle stampede, and you can see them approaching from the desert, creating massive clouds of dust, and in the background are mesas. The boy stops the cattle by waving a red tablecloth. Then, the illustrations segue back to the classroom.

The writing goes like this: "When summer began, I headed out west. My parents had told me I needed a rest. Your imagination, they said, is getting too wild. It will do you some good to relax for a while. So they put me aboard a westbound train. To visit Aunt Fern in her house on the plains. But I was captured by cowboys, a wild looking crowd, their manners were rough and their voices were loud." The writing in the entire book takes the form of rhyming sentences.

Regarding the illustrations, all of the colors are somewhat dark, as might be found in typical drawings by children. Typically, only adult artists realize that most out-of-doors scenes, especially desert scenes, are much brigher than the colors available in sets of colored pencils, or by sets of Crayola Crayons, or by a typical set of watercolors. (The paintings of Robert Bechtle provide an excellent example of out-of-door scenes that have a brightness more in line with actual out-of-doors brightness) The clouds in Mark Teague's desert resemble the surrealistic desert objects found in deserts of artist, Yves Tanguy. Most of Mark Teague's illustrations take up the entire page, but some have wavey borders, resembling the wavey border of a small puddle of spilled milk. The illustrations are in a realistic style, but not in the sharp-edged, super-realistic style used in children's books by David Wiesner (TUESDAY) or by Jan Brett (OWL & THE PUSSYCAT). I prefer Mark Teague's style of art.

Summary of How I Spent My Summer Vacation (Dragonfly Books)

Some kids spend their summer vacation at camp. Some kids spend it at Grandma's house. Wallace Bleff spent his out west...on a ride, a rope, and a roundup he'll never forget.

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