A cranky Revolutionary War soldier is persuades by his pony to go to town and buy a hat. It's a very silly explanation of how the famous song was written. This book would be good to use in a music class before introducing the song. ( )

Very funny rendition of classic song....Would be great puppet show... ( )

Author Tom Angleberger and illustrator Cece Bell offer a revisionist take on the classic song Yankee Doodle in this humorous picture-book, as Mr. Doddle argues with his pony about whether to ride into town, whether to go shopping, and whether to buy a feather for his hat, and call it macaroni. Mr. Doodle, as it transpires, doesn't like macaroni, much preferring lasagna...

Although I can appreciate the humor in Crankee Doodle - I have seen it performed during story-time, with two readers taking the parts of Mr. Doodle and his pony, and the effect on the young audience is always one of immediate hilarity - I find that reading it to oneself is quite a different experience to hearing it read aloud by others. Without the performative element the humor here falls a bit flat for me, and the gouache artwork, although colorful, doesn't quite compensate. Humor is, of course, inherently personal and subjective, so responses will vary, but this is one I recommend chiefly as a read-aloud, if the storyteller is particularly good at over-the-top performance. ( )

I thought Crankee Doodle was a funny imagining of events that inspired the song Yankee Doodle. It is humorous but it does give students some historical knowledge. ( )

Crankee Doodle Dandy is a whole new take on the song Yankee Doodle Dandy. It begs the question: what if Yankee Doodle didn't want to go to town? The book is told through a conversation between Yankee and his horse. I really liked how the author made it seem more like a comic book. All of the story is told through conversation and I really liked that. Another thing I liked were the illustrations. The pictures depicted the story wonderfully. I especially liked how the buildings at the end had a kind of modern look to them. The third thing I liked about the book was that their was an explanation at the end. It went over the historical context of the original song and even had most of the lyrics printed as well. The theme of this book was cranky emotions. Crankee Doodle was very cranky in the book and this made his horse cranky.