| Title | : | Leprechauns Don't Play Basketball (Adventures of the Bailey School Kids #4) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0590448226 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780590448222 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 80 |
| Publication | : | First published February 1, 1992 |
Leprechauns Don't Play Basketball (Adventures of the Bailey School Kids #4) Reviews
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Leprechauns Don't Play Basketball begins with what every book about St Patrick's Day should be and that's pinching. Eddie is pinching everyone that is not wearing green. He almost pinches a girl in his class Carrey ,the know it all but Mrs Jeepers stops him. Eddie insists on doing leprechauns work but Mrs Jeepers gets freaked by the mention of leprechauns .Eddie keeps up his mischief by tripping people ,kicking them and all the fun stuff. He is about to cut a strand of a girls hair when Mrs Jeepers begins to rub her green broach she always wears .They end up going to P.E where they see a very old looking short man wearing red. He has a pouch on his side. This is Mr O'Grady. He's here to teach them to dance like an Irish person (?) Eddie still wants to cause harm ,so he sneaks under the bleachers to release a bunch of basketballs but O'Grady reaches in his pouch and pulls out a stone and begins rubbing it and the balls go after Eddie making him dance .After this the kids think he is a leprechaun. Howie tells the kids his grandma is Irish so they go over to his house and find out more about leprechauns.Howies grandmother tells him a story about leprechauns. Basically leprechauns live at the end of a rainbow called emerald Isle.There was an emperor there that had these stones. They use these stones for different tricks and things and there's a fairy Stone that a vampire stole by pretending to be a teacher of the emperor's students .After that the vampires were able to ban the leprechauns to the emerald isle where they can only come back for three days.The amount of leaves on a three leaf clover thing. they also wear green to hide and to blend in with bushes and grass and stuff .We also learn if you stare into the eyes of a leprechaun you can control them. Of course Eddie doesn't believe any of this and he thinks that Mr O'Grady is not a leprechaun so he decides to try to trick him, because leprechauns are master tricksters and he does this by releasing a bunch of bees into the gym . The leprechaun just ends up controlling them . This further proves that he's the leprechaun because he out tricked him . This leads to the conclusion, which ends in a way that was pretty unique in my opinion .If there's one thing I realized while reading this book it's I don't know a thing about leprechauns.Im not sure if all do this is actually myths about the creatures but it was pretty fun . I especially likes that we kinda get a backstory of Mrs Jeepers broach. Leprechauns Don't Play Basketball was okay. It wasn't my favorite of the Bailey School Kids so far. I give it a 3 out of 5 stars.
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Some fun mythology introduced of the supposed beef between leprechauns and vampires! A good one for the season.
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This has been conflated in my memory with the Disney Channel Original Movie "The Luck of the Irish" (what is with leprechauns and basketball, anyway?) Anything is better when you add Timothy Omundson to it.
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This is a book that Lucy will definitely enjoy and I think it is appropriate for most kids. It does feel a little racist because there is a strong Irish/Romanian rivalry/hatred going on from the perspective of the kids. My only qualm is that I hate that they have one character that is unsympathetically bad. I wish it would show how he might be dealing with some personal issues rather than just leaving his as a jerk.
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This book was funny to me. There were 4 kids named Eddie, Howie, Lisa, and Melody. They were best friends since Kindergarden. They assumed the new basketball was weird. He turned out to be a Leprechaun.
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Bailey Elementary welcomes a visiting basketball coach that has some serious skill - but when the third graders learn he has a treasure to hide, they begin to think he may actually be a leprechaun! Dadey will have young readers laughing the whole way through this entry!
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I did not like this book because I do not like leprechauns. I enjoyed this book because I liked the part when the substitute for the gym teacher, which was a leprechaun, left. This book was not scary.
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The Leprechauns r so short
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mr.o'grady is very short and weird.
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All I remember about this one is that the leprechaun was kind of a dick.
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A
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This book is weird. But so is the concept.
Cover
The strangest thing about this cover is that if it wasn't for the title I would have no clue he was a Leprechaun. Just some elderly dude. (I'm not just talking about the outfit.) Also what is with the kids expressions. I get Eddie looking shocked but everyone else looks board. I do have to admit just having a cut out of Mr. O'Grady's face from the front cover on the back cover makes him look creepier than he does on the front.
I will say wearing a green tie is a nice way to give a nod to the modern Leprechaun design.
Interior
Story
This apparent 51 book universe is strange and forgivingly short. The lore in this book is shockingly deep and really pushes as much information and story as possible.
It is interesting how they not only added old mythology origins of Leprechauns originally being dressed in red into the story but they incorporated the design change into the plot itself. While I didn't expect that to be an actual real detail the other details don't go much farther than that. (Wouldn't it be an interesting addition if they said making shoes was a fourth fun thing to do.)
A little extra mythology lesson I didn't think I would get today.
Man, Eddie is quite a trouble maker. I have to admit not revealing what happened when he was taken into the hall with Mrs. Jeepers is really good choice.
I do think maybe a couple more added failed plots/pranks could have been a fun addition to the story. Building more personality not only to the kids but to Mr. O'Grady.
The gym teacher is hilarious and his scenes in the book stole the moment.
Illustrations
The illustrations are really nice. Great expressions and layouts. When there is a chance I love the playfulness in the pictures, hence the girl swinging from the rope during the release of the bees.
After Thoughts
I was torn between a two and a three stars. I think the book is ok but giving it two stars doesn't seem to do it justice. Over all I think this book is OK though. -
I remember loving reading the Bailey School Kids when I was in second and third grade, so I have read the first few to my 6-year-old daughter to get her interested in them. Unfortunately, there are a few things I don't love about the books now that I am reading them as an adult.
Firstly, I don't appreciate how often the author focuses on Melody's chubbiness. My kids don't naturally think about body image yet and I don't think it is necessary for kids to be taught to do so. Leprechauns Don't Play Basketball only mentioned her chubbiness once, but Werewolves Don't Go to Summer Camp mentioned it over and over again. When I read aloud, I can edit these comments out, but when my daughter listens to the audiobooks or gets to the point of reading the books on her own, I don't get to edit this out. I know I can talk to her about why it isn't okay to comment on people's weight, but I still don't think these comments and descriptions are necessary in these books.
My other concern with these books is how troublesome and rude Eddie is. I don't enjoy reading about him and while I know my girls are not likely to follow his example, I still don't love them hearing about his disrespectful antics. -
I think it's pretty cool how they kept Mrs. Jeepers as a recurring character. I think she was one of my favourites. I also really enjoyed the mystery. I don't know if the thing with leprechauns and vampires is a real folk tale sort of thing, but it was pretty cool. I like the little back story that sort of, kind of, confirmed that their teacher was a vampire. It seemed apparent that Mr. O'Grady and Mrs. Jeepers knew one another. I was just a little disappointed in the action. I don't know, I think it was just missing something.
I do always like how the stories end though, at least those are always good. I just want more. I don't know what more I want, but I just know I'm not getting enough, even though I really liked it. -
St. Patrick’s Day is always a tricky time at school. But there’s definitely more to the holiday than meets the eye in this book from the Bailey School Kids’ series. Eddie, the class prankster, seems to have met his match with Mr. O’Grady, a guest gym teacher from Ireland. The children are convinced that he’s a leprechaun and that he’s up to no good. Chapter book readers in grades 3 or 4 will enjoy finding out whether or not Mr. O’Grady truly is a leprechaun and what it is he’s up to. This might be fun to have in your classroom library or at home during the month of March.
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As a kid I LOVED this book and my daughter loved it so much she got more books from the library in this series. I didn't love it as much as when I was a kid, but it was fun to read it with my daughter.
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I love reading books from my past. It makes me want to find more books I can reread.
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Not as good as books 1 and 3, but still pretty cute.
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New gym teacher is suspected of being a leprechaun, so the kids try to outsmart him and get him sent back to Ireland. C+ -
This man is just trying to do his job.
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This one was so cute! I love how you never quite know if the people are supernatural or not
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I think I liked this one a little bit more because Eddie and Mr. O'Grady were more evenly matched - trickster v. trickster, as opposed to just "the new person in town."
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These books were fun to read as a kid, it’s been nice to revisit them as an adult and ride the wave of nostalgia.
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(I now maintain a blog just for my kid-lit reviews. Find it at
http://kidlit4adults.blogspot.com .)
A friend has convinced me to try my hand this year for the first time at writing children's literature; but I don't actually know anything about children's literature, so am starting the process among other ways by first reading a stack of popular books that have been recommended to me. Today's titles are from yet another of these series of endless chapter-books designed for grade-schoolers, in this case all of them co-penned by a duo of friends who used to be grade-school teachers themselves; this is one of the types of employment I myself am hoping to find in the industry, to kick out such easy-reading 30,000-word titles once a month or so, which is why I'm reading so many of them these days. Now, admittedly, this particular series is based on a high-concept that I find tough to imagine lasting for as long as it has; basically, each title features yet another new adult in the lives of our middle-class child heroes who may or may not be a mythological creature, exhibiting strange traits throughout the story but never just coming out and saying whether they're a mummy or vampire or whatever. (And in fact there are almost 75 books in this series now, nearly all of them featuring a different mythological creature, which just on its own is pretty impressive.) These are very much for the younger end of the chapter-book crowd, in my opinion from ages 7 to about 9 or 10, featuring lots of illustrations and a ton of silly humor; and to their credit Dadey and Jones are much more interested in simply being entertaining than in trying to teach a moral lesson, usually a common trait among books for this age group. They're nothing special, but certainly readable and fun, and come recommended for younger readers looking for their first dose of genre excitement but wanting to avoid dark material altogether.
