Ralph Tells a Story

In Ralph Tells a Story, Abby Hanlon captures the wonderful struggle of creativity through the eyes of Ralph, a young boy who believes that nothing ever happens to him. As writing time approaches, Ralph finds himself stuck with a blank page, staring at the ceiling in search of inspiration. Overwhelmed by the pressure to create a compelling story, he feels like he has nothing to share. With encouragement from his classmates, Ralph begins to discover that great stories can emerge from the simplest moments in life. As he learns to look at the world from different angles, he realizes that even the tiniest experiences can spark imagination and storytelling. Hanlon's endearing text, paired with charming watercolor and colored pencil illustrations, invites young readers to embrace the joy of writing. Ralph Tells a Story not only entertains but also reinforces the idea that everyone has a story to tell, making it an excellent complement to Lucy Calkins’ Writer’s Workshop model. This delightful picture book encourages creativity and celebrates the art of storytelling, inspiring children to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

I just received this book, read it once, and was so excited about how great it was I had to write a review immediately! "Ralph Tells A Story" is about a boy who can't seem to find inspiration for writing anywhere. He watches as his classmates write story after story, yet never finds any inspiration. By the end, Ralph learns that even the simplest, seemingly-boring aspects of his life can be the catalyst for compelling stories! As a 1st grade teacher, I know that this will be such an important book as a teach students to write "small moment stories." It's funny and cleverly-written, yet simple enough for young children to understand, and I feel confident that my students will be inspired to write! Although it's a great book in the classroom, I also think it's a worthy addition to any young writer's home library!

Kids and parents alike will love the characters, story, and illustrations. Kids will ask for it to be read over and over. Highly recommended!

This book was so helpful as my students were introduced to narrative writing

Amazing book for introducing writing time to second graders! Had my kids giggling and excited for writing

The previously (see update below) negative review was only regarding the electronic form of the book. In paper form I think this is a good story with a valuable message for children learning to write but the need to add electronic gimmicks had ruined this book. The text in the electronic book is made too small to read even though there is enough room to have had larger text, or even better, allow zoom to function in the book. Instead to read the text you had to tap on the text to enlarge it, which would have been an annoying interruption of the reading flow if it worked right, unfortunately it didn't. It amazes me how little vetting and editing is done with some of these electronic books. In this case sometimes one tap works and sometimes you have to tap a dozen times (not an exaggeration, try it) to get the text to enlarge to read it. This would be bad enough but a lot of the text is close enough to the edge of the book page that tapping just causes the page to turn rather than enlarging the text. Even if the text is not toward the edge of the page, taps often just causes the tablet controls to appear. My little one just got frustrated and lost interest in the story. If you want a well executed electronic book for children try the iPad App Lil' Critter "Me and My Dad" it is the best of the many dozens of children's electronic picture books we have tried. Even after many months we are still discovering new "Easter Eggs" in that book. UPDATE (I had previously given the electronic book 2 stars): I was contacted by Amazon and they let me know they had an update of the book and asked if it resolved the issue I had with the electronic form of the book. After trying the update, it did! I think I like the way they resolved it better than my suggestion to provide the ability to zoom in on the page the way you would reading a magazine on your K Fire. There is still the same difficulty enlarging individual text, that hasn't changed; BUT now when you start the book if you enlarge the first small portion of text the next portion of text is automatically enlarged when you do a page swipe. Each additional page swipe moves you in order to the next portion of small text and enlarges it until you get to the last portion of small text on a page and then the next page swipe gesture actually turns the page and enlarges the first portion of text on that next page; each page swipe gesture moving you through the portions of small text, in order, to the end of the book. Also, you can move back through the book the same way. The book now reads very smoothly. It's not intuitive though and without experimenting, someone who uses edge taps to move through the pages may not discover what the page swipe gesture does. I would suggest a note at the beginning of the electronic book to explain the use of the page swipe gesture. I was very impressed with Amazon's quick resolution of the problem with the electronic book; it took them less time than I have taken to update my review. Well done Amazon! I do wonder why this couldn't have been avoided by making each page into two pages so the graphics and text would be larger and you could read the text without the popup text feature. After all it works for the printed book.

This was such a fun book to read to my daughters ( 7 and 11). It also proved there really are stories all around you..

This is one of my favorite books to teach writing to my kindergartners. Believe it or not, they learn to write using writers workshop. This book helps them believe that they can write!

I read this book for a course I’m doing on writing picture books. Thoroughly entertaining. It tells the story of Ralph, who can never find a story to write. I particularly like his suggestion that writers should eat lots of chocolate.

My grade 2 class loved this book! They especially loved all of the book ideas at the end. We would love to see a part 2! It was very inspiring!

This book is Love. It's easy, it's cute and I like how Ralph's friends gave him prompts and he grabbed them. And Daisy! Oh she was a darling. The teacher! I really loved it that she didn't mind Ralph lying on the floor, she just asked him what he found. So all in all it's a good story for even the youngest of storytellers/storywriters to understand and get inspired.

Mu daughter loves it

Muito bom mesmo