Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato

Summary of Book: The story of Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato is an old traditional story that has been rewritten by Tommie De Pao. In this story, Jamie is a lazy man that makes his wife, Eileen, do all of the work until she is hurt and can no longer work. Jamie deicides that since nobody is doing any work they will end up dying and so he goes to confess during the night, finds a leprechaun and instead of gold gets a seed with the promise it will be the biggest potato ever. He plants it and it is so big he cannot get it out of the ground. So the townspeople help and then it gets stuck in the road and so Eileen says they should all eat from it. The people do and eventually become sick of potato. Jamie says he saved some seed so they can plant another one, but the townspeople are so sick of potato they promise to always cook for Jamie and his wife if he doesn't plant the seed. To which Jamie agrees.

Why you would/would not use this book in your classroom? I would use this book in my classroom because I think it is a really funny and silly book that my students would enjoy. It is just fun and easy to read.

Appropriate age group for this book: 3-7

Ideas for unit of study to include this book or how you might use this book in the classroom: I would use this book in a unit teaching about setting and characters. I could have the students draw the setting and characters, and then draw their own huge potato based off the one in the story.

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