No comments about 100th Day of School (Rookie Read-About Holidays).

No comments about Earth Day (True Books).

3 comments about Turkey Surprise.

1. Peggy Archer, Turkey Surprise (Dial Books for Young Readers, 2005)
   
   I've been trying to figure out how to fairly review this book for a couple of weeks now. I always do my best to try and divorce my feelings on the book itself from the feelings of the message contained therein, as long as that message is artfully conveyed. I always thought that I could fairly review books containing even the most offensive messages based on their technical merits. This one has sorely tested that belief. Not just because the underlying message is the kind of thing that drives me up the wall, but because this in one of those rare cases where the book is technically proficient enough to warrant a positive review.
   
   Turkey Surprise is well-written enough that its message doesn't slap the reader in the face with a dead fish (or turkey, as the case may be), but it still gets its point across with no ambiguity whatsoever (Spider Robinson could learn a whole lot from Peggy Archer)-- this is a vegetarian manifesto that attacks Thanksgiving, and it's an important enough point that it's mentioned front and center in the Booklist review that heads up the Amazon page. If you, as a parent, don't have a problem with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, and see no reason why your child should, avoid this book. Its entire purpose is to telegraph the message "turkeys should not be killed for food."
   
   But, as I said, it gets that message across both with technical proficiency (the writing style is well above average-- stratospheric for a "message book," in fact) and nonverbal content (the pictures are witty and charming).
   
   My original rating of the book was, for all intents and purposes, an excoriation, pure and simple. I have since revised it up to "perfectly average" (perhaps "perfectly balanced" would be a better phrase here) to account for the fact that the only thing about the book that bothers me is its message. It may go up again in the future. ** ½



2. My pre-schooler and I both enjoyed this book. It is a lovely holiday book which I expect to be asked to read long after Thanksgiving. Both the text and the illustrations were artfully rendered. I found the surprise that this pilgrim family chose not to eat turkey at their otherwise traditional Thanksgiving dinner to be unique and entertaining. My daughter, a confirmed meat eater from a confirmed meat eating family, thought the ending was fun. I would highly recommend this book.



3. Two pilgrim brothers go around town and look for a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner in "Turkey Surprise". The little pilgrim brother isn't sure about plucking, stuffing and cooking a turkey. As they are searching, a turkey walks along the road and realizes that the pilgrim brothers want to pluck and stuff him. The turkey tries to find a hiding place but none of the places that he goes (up a tree, a gopher hole, in the water) can effectively hide the turkey. The little pilgrim brother spots the turkey and finds a good hiding place for him and convinces his big brother to bring something else to Thanksgiving dinner.
   
   Some parts of the story are repetitive, making it suitable for beginning readers. The story itself was not interesting enough to sustain my childrens attentions. When little pilgrim asks if a turkey is necessary to have at Thanksgiving, his brother's only explanations were that "Mother and Father want one". A more acceptable analogy would have been to explain the significance of having turkeys at Thanksgiving, perhaps even the origin of when the first turkey was served at Thanksgiving.
   
   Two of the main characters, the turkey and the little pilgrim, appeared ignorant and awkward. The turkey realized that he couldn't swim AFTER he almost drowned. Did the little pilgrim really see the turkey all of those times that he was looking through his spyglass? The evidence suggests that he did know and, in fact, did manage to protect the turkey from becoming a part of the family's Thanksgiving feast.
   
   What could have been a heroic tale of a pilgrim who saved the life of an animal merely ended up as a truly ridiculous turkey tale.

2 comments about Who Do You Love?.

1. We love Martin Waddell's books, particularly the ones that have touched our hearts and tickled our funny bones (Once There Were Giants, The Big, Big Sea, The Pig in the Pond). This book fits right in! My daughter, now 3, is at the stage where she loves mama "best of all." And the delightful teasing in this bedtime story gave her a new way to play that game! We are thrilled to find another Waddell book that we hadn't read!



2. This is a charming, cozy book, marred only by its repetition of bad grammar. The author and publishers (what are editors for?) have missed an opportunity to fix the correct form in the minds of children and parents everywhere, and to have it associated with a smiling, shared secret pleasure. No rhyme or rhythm would have been destroyed by saying "Whom do you love?" instead of "Who do you love?" Quite the contrary, in fact: the m of whom lends a certain delicious quality to the question. If you are reading to a non-reader, and can substitute whom for who without detection, this is recommended bedtime reading; if not, skip it.

No comments about Ant and Honey Bee: What a Pair!.

No comments about Ice Guys Finish Last! (Scented Sticker Coloring Book).

1 comments about Christmas Is Here, Corduroy! (Sticker Stories).

1. My daughter loves Corduroy and sticker books, so this is a great comibination. If you are looking for a sticker book that shows dotted lines to help your child place the sticker in the right picture, look for another one.

2 comments about Morris the Artist.

1. Poor Morris can't bear to part with the gift of paints he brought the birthday boy. The tiny package grows and weighs on Morris until he is unable to enjoy the party. When he's finally ready to give it --the birthday boy has gone on to his other presents. Morris opens the paints and soon has the whole party joining in creating fantastical painting on paper and on themselves. The art draws the reader in, it's peculiar, but appealing with lots of different perspectives, the artist has fun with the sizes of things. A lovely book.



2. The good things: The art is eye-catching, the colors work well togther, and it looks, well, artsy, which is good, since it's about a boy who wants to spend all his time painting. Morris is supposed to give Benjamin a birthday present, and at first he doesn't want to. As he sees more things he wants to do, the present gets visually bigger as holding onto it is a bigger problem for Morris. The author presents the stress of a young child's birthday party pretty accurately (at least from the observations of this mother).

   The bad things: The story is going along well, and then it just ends in what feels like the middle. If you take out the text and look at it, you're left scratching your head and going, "huh?" The action doesn't wind down or come to a conclusion or anything. It's a bit disconcerting. Also, the kids' faces in the pictures don't look like kids (abstracted or otherwise).

   Overall the pictures are fun, but I think the text could have been tweaked just a bit to make it better.

No comments about Presidents' Day (National Holidays).

No comments about Cooks, Cakes, and Chocolate Shakes (Sanders, Nancy I. Parables in Action.).