Officer+Buckle+and+Gloria

By Peggy Rathmann
Book Review By Lindsey Prusak ==  ==

__**Author’s Bio **__
====Peggy Rathmann was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on March 4, 1953 and has two brothers and two sisters. She attended multiple colleges, but eventually graduated with a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Minnesota. Her stories are influenced by moments and memories throughout her life. For example, when she first started writing she would use characters from her classmates’ stories until her teacher convinced her even beginning writers could create unique characters. This resulted in her book “Ruby the Copycat,” which earned her the “Most Promising New Author” distinction in Publisher Weekly’s annual Cuffie awards in 1991. Now Peggy continues to write as she resides in California with her husband and pet birds. ====

**__Summary __**
====Officer Buckle knew everything there was about safety, but every time he tried to tell people nobody would listen. He would even put entire rooms to sleep. Then one day the Napville Police Department bought a dog named Gloria. During the speech on safety Gloria would act out the safety instructions secretly behind Officer Buckle, and he never realized why the children were having so much fun. He received letters from the students each with drawings with Gloria on them. From here they became the perfect team and began to travel to more and more schools. One of the schools had the news come and record it so that one night when Officer Buckle was watching the recording it was revealed to him what Gloria had been doing all along. The next day Gloria went to the school alone because Officer Buckle believed that the students only cared about her, but everyone in the audience including Gloria fell asleep throughout the presentation. There was a huge food fight and the next day Officer Buckle got letters from the students talking about his safety tips they used in the accident. Officer Buckle learned that the most important lesson was to always stick with your buddy. ====

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__**Review **__
====This is a great book for the classroom because it emphasizes the importance of safety and can serve as the start to a lesson on many different aspects of safety whether its within the classroom, on the streets, or in the home. The book was very well written but more importantly the pictures go along with the story so well, which allows the readers to really picture what the characters are doing throughout the story. I also thought the book was very kid friendly because it had the students creating letters to Officer Buckle and Gloria, so if this book was used within my classroom one way I would be able to use it to work on writing skills would be by having the class write their own letters to Officer Buckle and Gloria. This book may be focused on the theme of safety but there are so many different things that can be done with this book within the classroom. ====

__**Analysis **__
====Throughout the story "Officer Buckle and Gloria," Peggy Rathmann develops the plot in a few ways. The story opens up by telling the reader how Officer Buckle has all of this good advice about safety that nobody ever listens to, until the police department buys a dog named Gloria. This dog listens to everything Officer Buckle says and obeys everything he tells her to do. Together they form the perfect team and are able to spread safety awareness to many schools but Officer Buckle isn't fully aware of all of the help Gloria is really bringing him until he watches it on the news. He believes that people were only listening to him because of Gloria so the next day he doesn't go with Gloria to the school. For someone who knew all about safety it turns out in the end that he still had more to learn. There are always safety lessons for people to learn and in Officer Buckle's case it was to always stick with your buddy.====