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Ragweed & Poppy

Ragweed & Poppy

Harper­Collins, 2020
illus­trat­ed by Bri­an Flo­ca
Book 2 of 7

buy the book 

audio book nar­rat­ed by 
John McDonough

The Poppy Books
Ragweed
Book 1 of 7
Poppy
Book 3 of 7
Poppy & Rye
Book 4 of 7
Ereth's Birthday
Book 5 of 7
Poppy's Return
Book 6 of 7
Poppy & Ereth
Book 7 of 7
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What’s this book about?

How did Rag­weed and Pop­py meet and become friends? This book tells their hilar­i­ous sto­ry! Adven­tur­ous gold­en mouse Rag­weed is on a freight train leav­ing the city of Amperville. On his jour­ney he meets Lotar, a young, annoy­ing, and lost rac­coon who’s des­per­ate to reunite with his moth­er. Though Rag­weed doesn’t real­ly want to help the rac­coon, by doing so he winds up in Dim­wood Forest.

Rag­weed is now ready to strike off on his own, but it’s not long before he hears a cry for help. Fol­low­ing the sound of the voice, he finds a cage with a deer mouse trapped inside. When he asks the mouse’s name, she replies, “Pop­py.”

The way Rag­weed comes to Pop­py’s aid, and how Pop­py comes to his, is how their rous­ing and fate­ful friend­ship begins. As for that annoy­ing rac­coon, he keeps get­ting in the way.

Resources

Story Behind the Story

The ori­gins of Pop­py, and the Pop­py series can be found on this blog in a post dat­ed June 13, 2017.

If you read that post and the oth­er posts about the sequen­tial books, you’ll note that I nev­er intend­ed to write a series, that even as they appeared they were not writ­ten in sequence. More­over, that first pop­py book appeared in 1985. In oth­er words, the series began twen­ty-five years ago. That’s a stretch.

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Awards and Recognition

  • Kirkus Reviews 10 Top Mid­dle-Grade Sum­mer Reads

Reviews

“Avi han­dles the large cast of famil­iar and new char­ac­ters with ease, while pac­ing the nar­ra­tive for max­i­mum enjoy­ment. Flo­ca’s pen­cil draw­ings illus­trate the sto­ry. … A must-read choice for Pop­py fans.” (Book­list)

“A char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly droll lagniappe for a durable and pop­u­lar series.” (Kirkus Reviews)

buy the book 
The Poppy Books
Ragweed
Poppy
Poppy & Rye
Ereth's Birthday
Poppy's Return
Poppy & Ereth
if you liked this book, try: