Mr. Griggs' Work

Title: Mr. Griggs’ Work

Author: Cynthia Rylant

Illustrator: Julie Downing

Picture book for ages (approximately) 5 and up

Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Summary:

This is a picture book about a man, Mr. Griggs, who is a mailman. He loves his job very much but one day becomes ill and can’t work. When he gets back to work he feels so much better.

Opinion:

I chose this book because I have heard many of my professors praise Cynthia Rylant’s work, but I must not have grabbed one of her best. Don’t get me wrong, this was a decent book, it just wasn’t great. The story never really went anywhere. The literary element of plot never really went anywhere and I never really felt any mood. There was no emotional connection to the character and I never got pulled into the text. I kept waiting for something to happen, something to really make this story pop, but at the end all I could think was, the crazy workaholic mail man got sick, whoopty doo.

The pictures in this story, contrary to the story itself, were lovely. If I were to read this book again, for whatever reason, I would probably just look at the pictures. Mr. Griggs’ crazy hair and facial expressions made me smile and added a little depth to his character. The pictures often gave details that the words did not, which helped with the uneventful plot.

I would use this in my classroom but probably only as an option on my library shelf and only because I don’t see any particular reason not to. If a student wants to read it, fine. I think everyone needs to read books of varying quality. How do we know something is high quality if we’ve never seen anything of lower quality? Basically I think of this book as average, nothing amazing, but nothing awful either.