SuitabookBig top Otto
Bill Slavin
- Reading
- Read alongside the illustrations, pausing to identify what visual jokes add beyond the words. Before or after the circus section, invite the reader to separate slapstick consequences from the more serious idea of animals being taken and controlled.
- Themes
- Friendship and perseverance: Otto continues searching for Georgie, his childhood friend, with Crackers accompanying him through the pursuit. The continuing search clearly foregrounds friendship and persistence, but the ending is not available to show how fully these values are affirmed or tested.
- Animal captivity and human power: Georgie is abducted and may be connected with a circus; the pursuit later reaches a front for exotic-animal smugglers, and animals are reportedly hunted for sport. The book leaves its stance open to more than one reading.
- Comedy and consequences: Otto and Crackers cause or encounter comic disruption, including a crashed football game, a stolen peanut-shaped car, imprisonment and Otto’s explosive sneezes. The book?s stance on this remains unclear.
- Worth knowing
- Consider discussing the contrast between comic animal characters who speak and wear clothes and the humans’ power to abduct, confine, smuggle or hunt animals. The humorous tone may make that contrast easy to overlook.