Officer Buckle and Gloria

Officer Buckle and Gloria

Author: Peggy Rathman

Genre: Fiction

Grade Level: Grades K-2

Year Published: 1995

Summary

This book takes place in a place called Napville, and it centers around a policeman, Officer Buckle, who knows more about safety than anyone else in the town. No one listens to his safety tips until he brings the police dog Gloria with him. Without Officer Buckle knowing, Gloria acts out the safety tips in a way that grabs everyone’s attention, and all of a sudden Officer Buckle and Gloria are requested everywhere. When Officer Buckle discovers that everyone is watching Gloria and not him, he stops doing the safety tips. Eventually, Gloria and the children convince him to come back and help after Napville has its worst accident ever!

About the Author

Peggy Rathman was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was one of five children. She attended many different colleges with many different majors, and eventually received a B.A. in  psychology from the University of Minnesota. She then studied children's book writing and illustration at Otis Parsons School of Design in L.A. She says, "I spent the first three weeks of my writing class at Otis Parsons filching characters from my classmates' stories. Finally, the teacher convinced me that even a beginning writer can create an original character if the character is driven by the writer's most secret weirdness. Eureka! A little girl with a passion for plagiarism! I didn't want anyone to know it was me, so I made the character look like my sister." This resulted in her first book, Ruby the Copycat. Since then, she has written many more books, including Good Night, Gorilla, and Ten Minutes till Bedtime. She resides in Nicasio, California with her husband.

Source: http://www.peggyrathmann.com/peggyrathmann.html

How to Use it

The main idea of this book involves the safety tips that Officer Buckle gives. Also, it shows how two people (or, in this case, a person and an animal), can work together to get across an important message. 

Pre-Reading: Talk to the children about safety rules. How important are they? What are some examples of them? Make a list with the children about some rules that they are aware of in their school. What makes some rules more important than others? What kinds of things would happen if there was no rules? Discuss this with the class as a whole group.

Post-Reading: Each child should individually make up a rule that they think would be the most important rule in their school. On a star-shaped paper, they should write the rule and illustrate Gloria acting out the consequences if the rule isn’t followed, as she does in the book.

 

What do I Think?

This book fits in quite nicely with our first grade social studies unit of rules/laws. I will definitely use it in my classroom this year. I think that the book is entertaining, informative, and thought provoking.