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.
Bednorz, Brett: - Brett Bednorz is a graphic designer and artist living at the beach in Southern California. As an artist, he primarily works in mixed media art with ocean-inspired themes. As a graphic designer, he creates unique drawings for summertime events sponsored by cities and harbors along the California coast. Brett has illustrated several children's books in his career, and the vegetable characters used throughout the Archie Artichoke stories are Brett's most ambitious work to date in this artistic genre.
Kuepper, T. a.: - "Ted Kuepper is an environmental engineer with a deep appreciation for nature and the environmental challenges we face today. In his career, he has been the managing director of a seawater desalination test facility for the US Navy, and executive director of an international nonprofit organization focused on supplying safe water to rural villages in developing countries. Within his humanitarian work he has traveled to some of the world's most remote locations, helping to supply water during natural disasters. He began writing the first Archie Artichoke story quite by accident! As the story goes - He was driving his family to Sequoia National Park in California and the kids were getting more fidgety by the minute. When that happened, he'd often start singing a song to get everyone to stop thinking of how long the drive had been and how uncomfortable their old Chevy station wagon was. For some reason on that day, driving up the hill to the entrance of the park, he sang this single lyric: "Artichoke, you're a funny bloke." He was as surprised as the rest of the family, since he had never heard that lyric before. It appeared at that moment-and probably was the result of his wife and him attempting to educate their children on the rewards of eating vegetables. The lyrical line was easy to sing, and from there he wrote more lyrics about Archie Artichoke to finish what eventually became known as "The Artichoke Song." Soon after, he wrote a song about a little dance he did with his kids around the house, and its title became "Archie's Dance Tune." You may recognize the melody of "Archie's Dance Tune" since it's the military cadence song "I don't know, but I've been told..." Ted was in the Marine Corps during the 1960's, and that particular song made a lasting impression on him as it was sung during the many exercise activities that all Marines endure during training. He invites you to visit his website, www.ArchieArtichoke.com."
