Ooko by Esme Shapiro

August 14, 2018 By Leave a Comment


Ooko by Esme Shapiro
Publisher: Tundra Books
Genre: Childrens, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (40 pages)
Age Recommendation: 3+
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Ooko has everything a fox could want: a stick, a leaf and a rock. Well, almost everything . . . Ooko wants someone to play with too! The foxes in town always seem to be playing with their two-legged friends, the Debbies. Maybe if he tries to look like the other foxes, one of the Debbies will play with him too. But when Ooko finally finds his very own Debbie, things don’t turn out quite as he had expected!

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Everyone needs friends. This includes foxes, too.

Ooko’s relationships with the various humans he met on his quest to make a new friend was delightful. Not only did he assume they were all called Debbie, he also thought they all liked the exact same things. This misunderstanding early on lead to all sorts of adventures later on. I was entertained by his assumptions about people just as much as I was curious to see if he’d ever become true friends with anyone he met.

There was one part of the plot that I wish had been developed more thoroughly. It had to do with Ooko’s original urge to find a friend and how he decided that was something he wanted in his life. He spent so much time talking about this desire that I was surprised by how he reacted to it once he grew closer to possibly reaching his goal. I would have expected the exact opposite to happen, so it would have been nice for the narrator to go into more detail about this before the end.

The ending was perfect. Not only was I satisfied by what happened to Ooko in the final scene, I appreciated the fact that the author gave so few hints about what would ultimately happen to him before she revealed everything. This was an excellent decision for a character who so often refused to live by the rules that humans often assume should apply to everyone. It felt very fox-like in the best sense of the term.

Ooko made me smile. I’d recommend it to anyone who is in the mood for a picture book that deals with a common childhood problem.

Filed Under: Reviews, YA/Middle Grade/Children's Tagged With: , , , , , ,

How to Be a Lion by Ed Vere

August 3, 2018 By Leave a Comment


How to Be a Lion by Ed Vere
Publisher: Doubleday Books for Young Readers
Genre: Childrens, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (32 pages)
Age Recommendation: 3+
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

In this timely and charming story about the importance of being true to yourself, mindfulness, and standing by your friends, we meet Leonard, a lion, and his best friend Marianne, a . . . duck. Leonard and Marianne have a happy life together—talking, playing, writing poems, and making wishes—until one day a pack of bullies questions whether it’s right for a lion and a duck to be pals. Leonard soon learns there are many ways to be a lion, and many ways to be a friend, and that sometimes finding just the right words can change the world . . .

The pediatricians will decide the sessions and protocols for each generic pill viagra particulate with ASD. Impotency is very common among males with chronic sleep difficulty or chronic buy viagra italy insomnia. They typically cause problems in the implantation of the egg viagra from canada and even increase the chances of suffering a miscarriage. It is obvious price of viagra that many parenting styles used today are unwittingly causing poor behavior in the children and affects how information is processed in thebrain; this disorder can be genetic. This sweet, funny, thoughtful, and much-needed story will open up readers’ eyes to the importance of being who they are and not backing down to hurtful criticism. It’s an empowering tale about connecting with others and choosing kindness over bullying, and shows children how angry and provocative words can be overcome by empathy and courage.

Who says lions always have to be ferocious?

The friendship between Leonard and Marianne was sweet and supportive. I enjoyed seeing all of the ways these two friends could come up with to have fun together. They had similar ideas of what someone could do with their free time, and all of their ideas sounded appealing to me. While I don’t know if the author is ever planning to turn this into a series, there is definitely a lot of room here to explore what these characters got up to after the final scene in this book.

Leonard had an incredibly kind and gentle personality. I would have liked him regardless of what kind of creature he was, but the fact that a lion was described in this way only endeared me to him even more. He was such a unique soul that I couldn’t help but to hope that he’d become more comfortable in his skin and make friends with folks who didn’t judge him based on what he looked like.

I adored the message of this tale. Some people and lions will never fit the stereotypes of what others think they should be like. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being different from everyone else, though, and I loved the fact that the narrator made this so clear to the readers through what happened to Leo as he broke all of the rules about how lions are supposed to behave.

How to Be a Lion was one of the best children’s stories I’ve read so far this year. I can’t recommend it strongly enough.

Filed Under: Reviews, YA/Middle Grade/Children's Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Pop! by Jason Carter Eaton

August 1, 2018 By Leave a Comment


Pop! by Jason Carter Eaton
Publisher: First Second
Genre: Childrens, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Action/Adventure, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (40 pages)
Age Recommendation: 3+
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

A quiet afternoon of blowing bubbles and popping them turns into a Planes, Trains, & Automobiles, (and Helicopters, and Fighter Jets, and Moon Shuttles)-style adventure, as our young protagonist Dewey struggles to pop that one bubble…The Bubble That Got Away.

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The chase is on, and Dewey is determined to pop that final bubble.

This was such an imaginative story. I adored the fact that Dewey was so determined to hunt down and pop the final bubble he’d blown that he didn’t allow anything to stand in the way of him attempting to reach his goal. The plot twists that unfolded as he chased the bubble across town and to places even further away than that were truly delightful.

I would have liked to see a little more time spent explaining how Dewey was able to talk his way onto some of the buildings and flying contraptions that he used to figure out where his bubble was headed next. So much time was spent showing how the beginning of this tale happened that I would have liked to see the same attention paid once the plot sped up and the stakes grew higher. With that being said, this is a minor criticism of something I enjoyed quite a bit overall.

The ending was absolutely perfect. While I did suspect earlier on in the storyline that something like it was going to happen, I still had a wonderful time seeing if my prediction would come true. When I realized I was right, it only made me enjoy the final scene even more because of how happy I was that I thought of it ahead of time. Mr. Eaton didn’t leave many clues at all about how everything would end. Catching on them took some thinking, and I’m glad I paid such close attention to what he did share about the ending early on.

Pop! is something I’d especially recommend to anyone who has a vivid imagination or who wonders what it would be like to have one.

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy, YA/Middle Grade/Children's Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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