Rolling Harvey Down the Hill

by Jack Prelutsky, Victoria Chess (Illustrations)

Maybe you and the kids on your block are like Harvey and the kids on his block. Maybe you all live near a vacant lot. Maybe you all like to play ball. And maybe, just maybe, one of you has just eaten a worm.

Genres: Poetry

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Jack Prelutsky is an American poet. He attended New York public schools, and later the High School of Music and Art and Hunter College. Prelutsky, who has also worked as a busboy, furniture mover, folk singer, and cab driver, claims that he hated poetry in grade school because of the way it was taught. He is the author of more than 30 poetry collections including Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep< and A Pizza the Size of the Sun. He has also compiled countless children's anthologies comprised of poems of others'. Jack Prelutsky was married to Von Tre Venefue, a woman he had met in France. They divorced in 1995, but Jack remarried. He currently lives in Washington state with his wife, Carolyn. He befriended a gay poet named Espiritu Salamanca in 1997 and both now work together in writing poems and stories for children and adults alike.

Reviews

[Leath Y · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rolling Harvey down the Hill by Jack Prelutsky is a story that is written in poetry form. It's about 5 boys, 4 are friends and 1 is a bully, named Harvey. He's bigger than them and says he's always right. When he plays games he always wins and then brags about it. Will, Tony, Pumps and I are always together and doing things like eating worms, playing ball and racing each other. One day Harvey wanted to race with us. He ran so fast down the hill that he stumbled and started to roll down the hill. We continued to roll him and ran beside him laughing. I enjoyed the book because it was written in poetry form. It was funny and easy to read and I give it 4 stars. I would recommend it to others to read.

[Cory Schulz · Rating 4 out of 5]

No matter what Jack Prelustsky writes, his poems are funny and so entertaining. My classroom will have a whole collection of his books because I feel that Prelustsky’s poetic style will have the most reluctant reader reading. Harvey and the kids on his block, Lumpy, Tony, and Willie, all live in the same apartment house, and together, reflected by the poems, they manage to pull off some crazy antics. Other poems describe the characters, their attributes, or things they have done. This book would appeal to all children, but it seems to be geared to an audience of boys and adventures they can relate to. As talented as Jack Prelustsky is, I was surprised to find out that as a kid, he couldn’t stand poetry, largely due to a teacher who left him with the impression that poetry was the literary equivalent of liver. He was told that it was good for him, but he wasn't convinced. I’m so glad that he grew to write such wonderful poetry.

[Latanya]

Each poem in this book is part of a very amusing story about a group of boys growing up in the city. Although they claim to be best friends, the way the boys treat one another make the reader question the quality of their relationships. Many of the stories center around the boys’ contempt for Harvey – the neighborhood bully. While the situations depicted accurately represent occurrences from childhood, some of the issues should be discussed by an adult. One scene involves children smoking, and in another, Harvey has tied his friends to a tree and removed some of their clothing. In the final poem, Harvey is rolled down the hill as payback for tormenting his friends. Although the story identifies many forms of bullying, it is not a serious book explaining how to effectively deal with bullying.

[Cassandra Ball · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a variation of poems all dealing with this group of five friends who were boys. Some of the poems talked about what was happening, so situations that one or more of the boys were placed in. Other poems were used solely to describe the characters; either by things that have done or attributes they possessed. I wasn't too fond of the smoking poem that they author put in the book because I imagined these boys are like 5th graders and didn't seem reasonable for their age. Even though I know that poems do not always have to rhyme, the scheme that the author used was a little off to me and it made the book a little hard to read. I do think that children would enjoy this book and could probably relate to some of the experiences that these boys had.

[Lyndy Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Rolling Harvey down the Hill" is full of very cleverly written rhyming poems. Instead of a collection of random poems, this book is almost written in sequential order that tells a story. In this book, we meet 5 best friends and learn all about each of their personalities (except the narrator). The narrator introduces his four best buddies (Tony, Lumpy, Harvey and Will) and writes many poems about the activities that they do and the trouble that they get into. I think this would be a good book to have on hand when introducing poetry to show boys that poetry can be messy, chaotic and wild.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had some touble making boys in it! I thought it was a really cool book because not only was it poems, it was geared towards boys. I think the poems in this book boys can relate to and think this is a silly book.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is entertaining, hilarious and has wonderful learning lessons for children! Politically incorrect at times but that's the best kind of literature for children. :)