The Big Show is the first illustrated chapter book in the Adventures of Archie Artichoke series of stories written about a remarkable garden of vegetables.
In this adventure, Archie and his veggie friends want to help a local family of squirrels gather acorns for the winter since the squirrels have been busy caring for their sick child all summer and unable to store enough food for winter. The veggies work together and put on an amazing show full of surprising entertainment with a ticket fee of two acorns for each member of the audience. The story chronicles the vegetables' creative process as they develop the show's unique songs, dance, juggling and trained worm acts. This illustrated chapter book contains a variety of child-friendly rhymes, jokes, and songs.
All of the Archie Artichoke series of books are written specifically to help children develop their imagination through visual imaging of text and dialogue, complemented with full-color illustrations. And besides being fun to read, The Big Show has positive messages and is designed to teach children about:
Accomplishing a difficult task and solving problems;
Working with others to achieve a common goal;
Creativity and crafting something completely new;
Caring, helping others, friendship; and
The names of many important vegetables!
Because The Big Show is relatively long for a young children's story, it is designed to be read over several days/nights. The age group for the Adventures of Archie Artichoke series is between three and nine years old. The narrative is designed to be read to a child, and third-grade children will delight in reading the books on their own.
More information about the Archie Artichoke series, as well as audio of Archie's songs, can be found on the author's website. Illustrations of the vegetable characters, suitable for coloring, may also be downloaded there.
