Rhino, rhino, sweet potato

The rhinos want the sweet potatoes. The villagers want the sweet potatoes, too. That spells trouble. Can the rhinos and the villagers live happily ever after together?

Maybe . . . if Roy can find a way to save the day.

Join in this exuberant romp that celebrates how kindness and courage can turn the world right side up!

Author Notes

Francine Prose was born on April 1, 1947. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1968. She received the PEN Translation Prize in 1988 and received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1991. Francine Prose novel The Glorious Ones, has been adapted into a musical with the same title by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. It ran at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City in the fall of 2007. Prose has served as president of PEN American Center, a New York City based literary society of writers, editors, and translators that works to advance literature in 2007 and 2008.

Prose novel, Blue Angel, a satire about sexual harassment on college campuses, was a finalist for the National Book Award. One of her novels, Household Saints, was adapted for a movie by Nancy Savoca. In 2014 her title Lovers at the Chameleon Club - Paris 1932, made The New York Times Best Seller List.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (2)

School Library Journal Review

PreS-Gr 1-This story is told primarily in rhyming quatrains and set in the small village of Sweet Potato, whose residents happily sing in their fields while working the land cultivating their singular crop. One unfortunate night, a herd of rhinoceroses crosses the river, stampedes into town, and devours every sweet potato in sight. Rather than exterminate the animals, one boy crosses the river, sings to the rhinos until he eventually befriends them, and then teaches them how to raise their own crop. Both communities now are self-sufficient, living peacefully side by side. A bold palette enlivens the quaintly distorted town and its few inhabitants. The rhinoceroses themselves are monstrous, hulking creatures on tiny legs. Despite the upbeat message of compassion and caring for your neighbors, this strange story is hindered by an inconsistent plot and meter. Better stories of friendship and sharing abound.-Laura Butler, Mount Laurel Library, NJ Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

Publisher's Weekly Review

Think of that axiom about teaching a man to fish-switch rhinos for the guy and sweet potatoes for fish, and the result, unfortunately, breaks no new ground. The hero, a redheaded boy named Roy, not only saves his village of Sweet Potato from marauding rhinos, but spares the misunderstood beasts from being massacred by the angry townspeople. "Now on one side of the river/ The rhinos eat what they've grown./ And nowadays on the other side/ The villagers have their own," writes Prose (Bullyville). Audience participation is invited by the catchy verse and two recurring songlike stanzas, one about root vegetables ("Sweet potato January, sweet potato June./ Sweet potato, hear our happy little tune"), the other a "rhino lullaby." Armstrong (The Chronicles of Narnia Pop-up) makes a valiant effort to give this material some crackle; his rhino gang, with long knobby snouts, dimwitted eyes and lumpy bodies, is impressively intimidating as miscreants and adorably ugly as Roy's new BFFs. But it's not enough to buoy the preachiness of the premise or the by-the-numbers personality of the protagonist. Ages 4-8. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Reviews (2)

School Library Journal Review

Publisher's Weekly Review