Herman the Helper

Title: Herman the Helper
Author: Robert Kraus
Illustrator: Jose Aruego & Ariane Dewey
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing (April 15, 1987)
Genre: Children's Picture Book
Readability Lexile: Preschool-1st Grade

Summary and Target Audience:
This story is about a very helpful octopus who lives in the sea and helps the young, old, friends and enemies with their daily troubles in the ocean.  The story plants the seed for building helpful behaviors and the unselfish acts of helping those around you.  It also includes some dialogue and hints at manners and please as well as thank you.  The audience for this text could be anywhere between ages preschool to first grade.  It would make a great story for a read-aloud at the beginning of the year for how to help other students around you.

Evaluation of the Text:
The main character overcame the problem- although Herman, the octopus, did not have any major problems of his own those around him were struggling with things such as freeing his brothers and sisters from the mouth of a sleeping fish and helping his dad hide so he could catch other fish for dinner.  This was an interesting book which I was intrigued by because of the different situations the author chose to depict.  It may bring up some interesting conversations on animal habits and habitats.

Characters fit the setting- all of the animals in the story fit the setting of the sea or ocean.  Herman, the main character, was an octopus and he had many friends he was helping in the ocean such as his octopus relatives (mom, uncle, dad, brothers and sisters) as well as sea horse friends and sea turtle friends.

The theme was worthwhile- although while I read it I was waiting impatiently for a climax or major event the overall theme of helping others and helping yourself without being asked or told was definitely worthwhile.  As mentioned before this would be a great read-aloud for the first day of school and making your own list in the younger classrooms of how to be helpful to others like Herman.

Literary Elements:

Personification- Herman the octopus not only embodied the personality of a helpful young person but also embodied other personalities such as positive, happy and hopeful as well as exchanging dialogue with the other animals like wishing his dad luck while he hunted after he helped him hide.

Style- The style the author chose to write in was very simple sentences.  "He helped his friends," was one of the sentences in the book.  Most of the sentences started with, "He helped..." and then who he helped.  The author also chose short dialogue between the characters such as, "Ouch!" and "Take it easy, Herman."  The animals almost always thanked Herman for his help as well.

Theme- As mentioned before, the theme for this story was being helpful to others.  Herman helps all of his friends and even some of his enemy sharks with their daily woes and then helps himself to food at the end of the story.

Illustrations:
The illustrations for this text are very colorful and detailed.  The pictures of the various animals are depicted in a cartoon-like style and the appropriate under-the-sea setting is placed with various rocks and water color blue for the ocean or sea.  This is a great book to explore with a young students because there are so many different attributes of the pictures to look at as well as reading their dialogue to one another.

Mini-lesson:
As mentioned before, with this story I would use it as a read-aloud in the first few days of school.  You could introduce it and create a poster as a class on how to be helpful to others, what to say in return when someone helps you and how to be gracious when being helpful.  The poster could say, "Helpful Herman" and have a list created by the students on small cut-out octopuses or a sea background created by the class as a whole and have all the ideas you came up with as a class listed on the octopuses.