Reviews for Do-Wrong Ron

The average rating for Do-Wrong Ron based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-01-09 00:00:00 Thomas Henry I love free verse novels. They are short and sharp and have no room for waffle. Verse novels are a great genre when you stop to think about it. Children and young adults supposedly love short books - finishing them gives them a real sense of achievement. They love writers who can sketch quirky, engaging and believable characters with a minimum of words, and who can create a setting they can see for themselves. Performance poet, Steven Herrick, is one of the masters of free verse novels for younger readers. He is able to do all these things and more - his books are guaranteed laugh-out-loud funny. Sadly for me Do-wrong Ron, Herrick's first novel with Allen and Unwin, having left University of Queensland Press in 2003 did not live up to my expectations. The characters were his usual off-beat outsiders looking for ways to fit in, and at times his writing was up there with the best he has done. But too many things didn't work for me. For instance, he started with a really clever device where the last line of one poem was the title of the next. I liked it, especially when it was a really odd last line and I wondered as I turned the page, 'Now how is he going to get a first line out of this?', but all of a sudden this device just stopped, and then it just started again. I kept looking for a reason but couldn't find one. I also loved that Charlie, Ron's pet guinea pig, also spoke his own poems, 'wee wee wee' and that Charlie/Herrick translated them for us dummies who can't decipher guinea pig poetry. Sometimes the number of 'wees' matched the number of words or syllables in the translation - and then sometimes they didn't which I think would annoy children who love looking for patterns and cracking codes. Caroline Magerl's black and white wash and line illustrations perfectly illustrated just how genuine Ron was as he tried to do the right thing and help others. I just wish there had been more of them. Luckily the librarian of a local school told me that she loved this book and thought it was hilarious, so I'm happy to stand corrected, because I do love Herrick's work and all he does for bringing children and poetry together.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-11-07 00:00:00 Nancy Cisler A delightful, heart-warming free-verse story for children tells the story of Ron, who can't do anything right. My name is Ron. Ron Holman. Or Do-wrong Ron, because I have this habit: I do the wrong thing at the wrong time. Or the right things at the wrong time? Or the wrong thing at the right time?His only friend is a guinea pig, Charlie, who everyone else in his small town thinks is a rat. When a new girl, Isabelle, arrives in town with her grandmother, Ron has the chance to make a new friend and to heal some of the loneliness and isolation afflicting people in the town. Character and plot development bounce along nicely in playful but subtle verse which effectively creates humour and pathos. The illustrations also really nicely capture the heart and energy of the story and its slightly mixed up characters, particularly Ron who just wants to do the right thing and help others. This is a fun story and a nice introduction to poetry for younger readers.