Printable puppets for adventures at home with Rockford T Honeypot and friends!

June 26, 2020

Start this summer off with a fun craft that you can print and bring adventures from the new book “The Adventures of Rockford T Honeypot” to life at home! Since we are stuck inside we decided to invite fun off the page and into our living room with fun puppets! We received an advanced copy of the book The Adventures of Rockford T Honeypot a week ago and the adventure began.

My kids are incredibly slow readers and so they opted to have us read it to them before bed every night. It has been a lot of fun and it has been great for all three kids. Truthfully, the four-year-old usually falls asleep because he is exhausted, but the next day he will ask the “big” kids what happened in the book. Their retelling of the chapter from the night before led me to think about how much fun it would be if they had little puppets to act it out. So I decided to create some!

A quick summary of the book to get to know the characters

As a young chipmunk, shy, bookish Rockford T. Honeypot had dreams of thrilling adventures across the forest. However, timid of danger and germs, his only adventures were found in books and his imagination. When his family abandons him after a mistake that destroys their hazelnut business, Rockford sets off on a legendary journey beyond his wildest dreams. From exploring cuisines with a famous chef, training with ancient warrior monks, flying on giant hawks, finding true love, and much more, Rockford recounts his epic origin story of hardship, perseverance, and fortune.

Meet Rockford

As a young boy, shy, bookish Rockford was the black sheep—er, black chipmunk, so to speak—of his large, rambunctious chipmunk family. Timid of danger and germs but fiercely desperate to grow up to “change the forest” like his literary idol and namesake, swashbuckling hero James T. Rockford, young Rockford sets off on an epic adventure to finally find his place in the world. Years later, an older Rockford attempts to connect with his grandson Theo by sharing the wild chain of events that brought him to the wealth and success that he has today.

The adventure begins

The moment Rockford’s adventure begins, he is is quickly launched into a journey that takes him to places he couldn’t have imagined in his wildest dreams—from the fast-paced kitchen of a city restaurant to the mysterious mountain sanctuary of warrior monks waiting for a legendary chipmunk to fulfill their prophecy, to a seedy swampland run by a gang of termites. Along the way, Rockford also meets a colorful assortment of characters—including Chuck, a smooth-talking hawk pilot; Jewel, a beautiful heiress with a heart of gold; and Braxton, a villainous chipmunk from Rockford’s past who is intent on stealing every scrap of his success.

Throughout this journey, Rockford learns the true value of never giving up, following your dreams in the face of adversity, and finding your place in a world that doesn’t understand your passions.

Directions to create these popsicle stick puppets is very easy! Just print out the one page (in color) on heavy card stock. Hint: I did it on regular paper and then glued it to construction paper because I couldn’t find my card stock and it really turned out nice. Cut out the characters and glue on a popsicle stick! I included the names in the printout of the characters so that you could also glue them on if you wanted to. My youngest is working on reading and so I thought it would be a good opportunity to associate the written names with the characters to help out with phonetics.