Otto's Orange Day: Summary, Impression, Peer Review, & Library Use
Title: Otto’s Orange Day
Author: Frank Cammuso & Jay Lynch
Book Summary: Otto is cat so energized by the color orange he wants everything in his life to be orange. One day the delivery man hands Otto a large box from his Aunt Sally. Inside the box is an old orange lamp she thought Otto might like. As he is dusting off the lamp a Genie suddenly pops out. The Genie tells Otto he can make one wish and it will be granted. Otto’s wish came true and now literally everything is his favorite color, orange! Otto is in heaven, but this soon changes when he realizes even the food he is given to eat is orange. Orange popsicles were wonderful; however, it is a different story when it involves meat and vegetables. He can’t eat his dinner, and he can’t even cross the street safely because the traffic lights are all the same color. Since the Genie said he only had one wish, he calls Aunt Sally and ask her for help. Sally gives Otto a nickel in exchange for the lamp, so now she has one wish. Her wish is for everything not to be orange. The Genie obliges and everything is changed to blue. Now instead of being energized, Otto has the blues. Upset with Genie, Genie shares that he is tired of being used for wishes. He wishes someone would do something for him occasionally. Otto comes up with the perfect idea! He orders pizza for the Genie who never eats because he in stuck in the lamp. Pizza made Genie happy and after seeing all the colors on the pizza, he decides to turn everything back into its original color. Now, Otto realizes orange is great but so are all the other colors.
APA Reference:
Cammuso, F. & Lynch, J. (2008). Otto’s orange day. New York, NY: Little Lit Library.
Impressions: Otto’s Orange Day is a graphic novel geared for grades K-3 that offers a light-hearted, fun story with a thoughtful ending. The moral, be careful what you wish for, can be clearly understood by the young reader due to the size of the text, panel structure, and format. This is a great book to introduce young readers to a different style of writing which still offers all the elements of a traditional novel. Students use the words as well as the pictures to understand the events in the story as well as the character’s personalities. Even the Genie’s actions can be used to talk to students about thinking about others. I would recommend this book as part of any classroom or library collection.
Professional Review: Written by'60s underground comic guru Lynch and Eisner-nominated Cammuso, who also did the artwork, this book in the new TOON imprint gives emerging readers a high-quality comic that is both loads of fun and easy to read. It's a simple, archetypal story: Otto, a little orange-loving cat, wishes "everything was orange," but when a genie grants his wish, he realizes that he should have been more careful what he wished for: orange lamb chops ... "Blaachu!!!" This is a textbook example of how to use page composition, expanding panel size, color, and stylized figures to make sequential art fresh, energetic, and lively. With the particular pedigree of the book's creators, however, one can't help but miss avantgarde subversiveness that made Little Lit books (e.g., Strange Stories for Strange Kids, 2001) for older children so thrilling and unique. Even without that element, though, this book is sure to engage a new generation in the art form; kids will want to read it once, then return to it again and again. -Jesse Karp
Karp, J. (2008, March 15). Youth graphic novel stars. [Review of the book Otto’s Orange Day by F. Cammuso & J. Lynch]. The Booklist, 104(14), 66. Retrieved from https://www.booklistonline.com/book-reviews
Library Use: This would be a great book to use when working on different types of sentences. After sharing the story, students could practice writing a declarative, exclamatory, interrogative, and command sentence about their favorite color. You can also pull several Toon books and place them in small groups, then the students work together to find one of each type of sentence before writing their own. From their own sentences, they can then create a graphic story using the app SuperHero Comic Book Maker by Duck Duck Goose or just using a sheet of manila paper.