Patrick Picklebottom Books: A Guide to the Series

Hey, Story Seekers!

Patrick Picklebottom has one penny.

He would like a book.

Those two facts do not normally go together, and that's where this whole series starts.

Mr. Jay writes them. Gary Wilkinson paints them. And if that name rings a bell around here, it should. Gary illustrated Petey Perfectpants for me. Same hand, different kid.

Readit spotted it before I told him.

What the Series Is

Patrick is a small boy with an enormous imagination and a very old-fashioned enthusiasm.

He likes books.

Not in a polite, character-trait way. He likes them the way other kids like dinosaurs or trucks, which is to say completely and without embarrassment.

Every book in the series drops him into a situation where something is competing for his attention, and then watches what he does about it.

They rhyme. All of them, in meter that holds up when you read it out loud, which is rarer than it sounds. And Wilkinson's artwork does the thing good picture-book art does: it gives you more than the words asked for. Little friends in the corners. Things happening behind Patrick while Patrick is busy.

One reader called the illustrations reason enough on their own, giving the first book "five stars just based on the art."

The Books

Ratings from Goodreads. Fair warning on the numbers: these are small samples next to a Mo Willems or an Eric Carle, and small samples tend to run warm. A 4.62 across 263 ratings and a 4.35 across 60,000 are not the same measurement. Read the table as a shape, not a scoreboard.

Start With the Penny Book

It's the first one and it's the best one.

Patrick has a single penny. In a shop window he finds a book he wants more than anything. A kind old shopkeeper tells him the book happens to cost exactly one cent.

Done. Patrick heads home with his prize.

Then the walk home turns into the actual story.

One friend has a drone. One has a video game. Something flashy is happening on every corner, and each one is a perfectly good reason to put the book down for a while.

Patrick keeps walking.

The rhyme is genuinely well built. Here's the shopkeeper, which will give you the meter:

"As it happens," replied the kind-hearted gent,
"This book only costs a single red cent."

That scans. You can read it aloud cold and not trip.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

I want to be straight about the thing people argue over in this one, because it's a real argument and it's worth your two minutes.

The Penny Book is, on its surface, a story where the kid who chooses a book is right and the kids playing video games are the temptation he walks past.

Not everybody loves that. One reader, LauraW, put it about as clearly as it can be put: the book "tries to show the boy who likes books is somehow better than the kids who like operating drones, playing video games, or other typical kid pursuits."

She has a point, and I'd be a coward not to say so. Books-are-better-than-screens is a message that lands very comfortably with the grown-up buying the book and slightly less comfortably with a seven-year-old who likes Minecraft and is now being told, gently, that he's the cautionary tale.

Here's what I'd say back, though, and it isn't a dodge.

Patrick isn't virtuous. He's excited. That's a meaningful difference. The book doesn't have him lecture anybody or turn down the drone with a little speech about screen time. He just wants the thing in his hands more than the thing on the corner. Kids understand wanting something that much. It's the closest thing a picture book has to a real feeling.

Whether that lands as joy or as a lesson depends a lot on who's reading it out loud, which is the case with most books that have a point of view.

And then the second book does something smarter with the same idea.

In The Longest Wait, Patrick shows up two hours early for story time. Two hours. He has nothing. So he starts singing. Then writing poems. Then drawing with chalk. Then building whole worlds out of nothing, and they follow him around.

One reader titled her review "The Advantages of Boredom," which is exactly right.

Nobody is scolded. No screens are refused. A kid is simply bored, and boredom turns out to be the raw material. That's a better version of the argument, because it shows instead of telling, and it lets your kid off the hook entirely.

If the first book's message rubs you wrong, buy the second one. Same rhyme, same artist, no lecture.

One more thing for the read-aloud. These are performance books because of the meter. Don't rush them. Rhyming picture books punish speed. Find the beat in the first spread and then stay in it, and the rhyme will do most of your work for you.

Readit's Review

A whole book for ONE PENNY?

Where is this store.

I want to go to this store.

Okay but I have to say something about the first one.

His friends had a DRONE.

A drone is extremely cool.

I think Patrick could have looked at the drone for like four minutes and still read his book later.

You're allowed to do both, Patrick.

But the second book is my favorite because he has to wait TWO HOURS with nothing and he just starts making stuff up.

Songs.

Poems.

Chalk drawings that follow him around.

That's what I do when I'm bored except mine don't follow me.

Also there is a dinosaur.

And I found Ricky the Rock in there, which nobody warned me about.

The pictures are the best part. There's always something happening in the corner while Patrick is doing something else.

Check the corners.

The Easter Egg

Speaking of which.

Ricky the Rock turns up in the Picklebottom books. Mr. Jay wrote Ricky, the Rock That Couldn't Roll too, and he's been quietly putting his own characters in each other's pages.

One reader mentioned their kid recognizing Ricky right away, which is the best possible outcome for a thing like that. It isn't a gimmick if the four-year-old finds it first.

So if your kid has read both, hand them the books again and tell them to hunt.

That's a second reading you got for free.

For Teachers and Librarians

Rhyming picture books, 32 pages, roughly ages 3 to 7, published independently by Lyric & Stone.

I could not find verified Lexile, Guided Reading, ATOS or word-count figures for these from a source I trust. That's normal for independently published books and it says nothing about the books. If you need a level for a classroom purchase, plan on eyeballing it.

The Longest Wait is the one I'd actually put in a classroom. Waiting is a daily problem in a room full of small children, and this gives them something to do with it that isn't a screen or a worksheet.

There's also a chapter-book spinoff, the Patrick Picklebottom Everyday Mysteries, for readers who've aged past the picture books and aren't ready to leave the character.

Belly Laugh Scale

2 out of 5: Giggle Territory, as a series

I'm not going to inflate this one.

These are warm books, not funny books. The pleasure is the rhyme, the artwork, and a kid with a big imagination doing things with it. There are grins in here and a dinosaur that earns one, but nobody is going to be rolling around.

A 2 is not a knock. The Very Hungry Caterpillar got a 2 from us for the same reason.

Different job.

Final Explorer Verdict

Buy The Longest Wait first.

I know the Penny Book is the famous one and the higher-rated one, and if your kid is three or four it's the right start. But The Longest Wait is the better book, and it's better for the exact reason people argue about the first one. It makes its case by showing a kid having a great time instead of walking past things he's supposed to resist.

Then get the Penny Book, because the art in it is the best in the series and your kid will want to know where that one-cent shop is.

And if the rhyme is what your family responds to, the same illustrator drew Petey Perfectpants And The Silly Sock Puppet Problem for me. Gary Wilkinson has a way with a small boy in a big predicament, and Petey's predicament is that he has lost control of his own hand.

Patrick keeps his composure.

Petey does not.

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit