*Animals should definitely not act like people by Judi Barrett is loads of fun. Drawings by Ron Barrett capture the silliness implied in the text. Each page shows a creature attempting a human activity. A worm uses both end of its wriggly body to hold up a dumbell, an octopus wears four baseball gloves, and a hippopotamus has a bathtub stuck to it's rear end. That hippo would "have to have a heap of help" to use a human bathtub! Each illustration is accompanied by a lot of alliteration. I love the giraffe standing at the top of a ladder attempting to paint its house. The last picture is startling. A variety of animals peer into a cage as if they are visitors in a zoo--and the reader is in the cage.
The Summer My Father Was Ten (1998)
* The Summer My Father Was Ten by Pat Brisson (1998) is a powerful story of intergenerational conflict and reconciliation. Every year, when...
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Frederick by Leo Lionni values the imagination. While Frederick's family gathers food supplies for the winter, Frederick sit...
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Molly and the Sword by Robert Shlasko, (1996) is unoriginal and tedious. Molly is a good daughter who demonstrates qualities one mi...