A Bad Case of Stripes

A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon


Shannon, David. A bad case of stripes . Blue Sky: Blue Sky Press (March 1, 1998), 1998. Print.

Readability Lexile: 540L

Age: 4-8


This is a story about a girl who doesn't want to eat limabeans because she is to embarrassed that none of her other friends like them like she does. So, she doesn't eat them, but after that indecent she starts to change. She develops a terrible case of the stripes. Her parents call in all the doctors, specialists, and even experts they can find, but no one can figure out what is wrong with her. 

Once again I have to be honest and say that I did not read this book because I had it read to me by Sean Astin (starred in Goonies, Rudy, and Lord of the Rings). I thought this book was very well developed, and I think it meets many qualities of high quality literature.  I thought the story was very relate able to almost all kids. I think there are many times in all of our lives that we are embarrassed of ourselves (especially in the early years of school), and this often times changes who we are and how we feel about ourselves. I often found myself thinking about my elementary experience, and how I sometimes changed things about myself to fit in with people. This book does a great job through a fun and interesting plot to dig into the issue of personal identity and individualization.  This book would be a great alley way to transition into talking about a whole handful of issues students face every day. These could be anything from friends, individualization, respect, teasing, and self-esteem. The themes are very strong in this book and they become more and more evident as you read the book. Shannon does an excellent job of developing Camilla, and I think she is very relate-able to all children because every child goes through what Camilla is going through.

Shannon does a wonderful job of pairing the illustrations with the story. It really gives you a very entertaining image to go along with the wonderful story. If I was doing a mini-lesson on this story I think I would either focus on individualization. I think this book is a great alley way to talk about these difficult and critical topic.

The target audience is probably early elementary students, but like I was saying throughout this whole story I was relating myself to Camilla. I thoroughly enjoyed this story and I would recommend it to anyone.

Thanks for reading y'all!

Gorms