Reviews for Ragweed

The average rating for Ragweed based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-11-12 00:00:00 Stacey Brunson Lachlan's 3rd grade teacher started reading the Poppy series by Avi to the class. Lachlan fell in love with the books and wanted to share them with us. In fact, the whole class fell in love with the books (I work at the school library during their library time, so I check out their books and I placed many holds on the Avi Poppy books.) Lachlan and I listened to this book as an audio book. The narrator is nothing short of fabulous! I feel great comfort and familiarity every time his voices comes on to read to us again! This prequel to the Poppy series was written after the the series was completed. It is a fine book (as in OK)--Lachlan actually really loved it. I felt rather lukewarm towards it. It suffers a bit in comparison to the other Poppy books which are truly fabulous. This book is the story of Ragweed, a four-month old country mouse who seeks adventure and hops on a train to the city. There he meets a cast of mice who live in fear under an organization headed by two cats (Silversides, a spoiled housecat and Graybar, an alley cat), which is actually named F.E.A.R. The mice in the city have car names--such as Dip Stick, Lugnut, Clutch, while Ragweed comes from a country community where all of the mice are named after plants. I liked the courage of Ragweed--how he was willing to go on a big adventure, how he assimilated himself so fully into the culture of the city, and how we quickly transformed from country mouse, to city mouse, to revolutionary mouse. I didn't love the city surfer talk--"dude", "like," "know what I'm saying" that was Clutch's way of speaking and soon became Ragweed's. It was too much for me. For kids that like animal stories, this is a winner of a series. There are lots of lessons that you could talk about from this book--standing up to your enemies, going on an adventure, hero's journey, overcoming your fear, loyalty, etc. The most important thing this book does is help you know, understand, and love Ragweed. His appearance in the next book, Poppy is so brief, that it is easy to misjudge him and malign him if you don't know his background. Recommend for all kids 3rd grade and up. And adults who enjoy good children's books.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-11-19 00:00:00 Tammi Donaldson A great book to read again and again!!