Four on the Shore

 By Edward Marshall

Sometimes these books are under James Marshall.  Because they are both the same person.

Lolly Sam and Spider make up stories on the lake to scare Willy.  They are terrible stories.  None of them are scary in the least.

 Each story is tacked onto the last to try and up the anti.  They're poorly written with simplistic explanations for things.  They're written exactly the way a story would be if it was told off the cuff by an 8 year old.

And it's hilarious, of course.  These books are just as good as anything else.  They're engaging for anyone over the age of four, but they're laugh out loud funny for anyone over 6.

Pinkalicious Soccer Star

By Victoria Kann

Oh wow I hate this book.  Guess who picked it out.

Dad gets the main character a pink soccer ball, and they play soccer against the mean angry girls who only wear black.  They say "Pink stinks!" because they are bullies.

You know, I've got this thing against asking kids what their favourite colour is.  They just say stuff because they hate saying, "I don't know".  And when they say, "I don't like green", like my daughter does, it doesn't mean anything, because there are so many shades of green.  I showed my daughter my new neon-lime-green sweatshirt and she was amazed and loved it, because, actually, she doesn't hate all shades of green.

 This shade of pink, however, is the same shade as Pepto-bismal.  And it's the only shade they use in the entire book.  Colours are exciting and this book about one specific ugly shade of pink that is already heavily marketed to girls is so dumb.

And kind of racist.

The message of the book is, I guess, to believe in yourself, but it gets lost on this weird trip across the world on a unicorn  seeing other girls who like pink.  Because the other message is that it's okay to like pink (like anyone is questioning that).




Look, I like pink.  I wear pink.  Heck, I even dress my son up in pink.  (pink on boys looks so rad.)

But look at that colour.

Of course my daughter loves this book.

Scat Cat

 By Alyssa Satin Capucilli
Illustrated by Paul Meisel

This is a great early reader.  It's full of tons of easy words.  I read it with my daughter and point to the words that she should be able to read on her own.

In particular, she can read "Cat", so she can figure out "Scat".

Basically every animal and person tells the cat to scat except for the cat's owner because he loves the cat so much.


 It has lots of repetition.  The problem I usually find with repetition, though, is that my daughter is smart enough that she doesn't need to look at the words once she's heard the pattern.  She also has excellent memory and it is rare that we can read a book a second time without her already knowing how it goes.

This book had enough material that I can randomly ask her different words every time we read it. 

Little Bear's Friend

 By Else Holmelund Minarik

Illustrated by Maurice Sendak

This is a really interesting book because it introduces a human character into a world of animals.  When a children's book brings a human child into a make believe world, it risks breaking the fourth wall.

 The whole way through I'm waiting for the author to slip up and make it awkward, but it's doesn't really happen.  The book continues to have charming, kind and thoughtful characters doing simple things.  It's a great little reader, too.

At the end, little bear writes a letter to the little girl.  I wonder how that will go over with her parents.  But my daughter probably doesn't.

Happily, the adults are never featured.

Too Many Cats

 By Sindy McKay
Illustrated by Meredith Johnson

This was a fantastic book that I randomly requested from the library because my daughter demanded more cat books.

It's a "We Both Read" book, meaning that the pages on the left have story, and the pages on the right have one or two words with a picture.

 The story is a pretty hokey one about a girl who wants a cat and dreams that she gets ten instead, each a different colour.  It means that it's teaching kids to sight-read colours and numbers instead of learn phonetically, which is okay.  You kind of have to learn both ways, because some of those numbers are impossible to sound out phonetically.

This book was a real hit.  Before I give it back, I think I'm going to photocopy some pages and cut them up for a mix-and-match activity with my daughter. 

Little Bear and the Marco Polo

 Written by Else Holmelund Minarik

Illustrated by Dorothy Doubleday

What a disappointment.  I usually love the little bear books.  They've got tons of repetition, so they're great little readers, and they focus on little bear's character.

This one is all about how his grandfather was a captain of a ship and then settled down and got married.

 There's a bit about the bears of the world.  The rest is typical patriarchal "what is marriage" garbage.  And, whatever, obviously I'm married and have kids, and lots of people are married and have kids, but books about that are BORING.

I don't care what Grandpa bear did.  I want to hear about Little Bear's pretend adventures.  That was what was so great about the earlier books.  (The other 5 books in the series were written 40 years before this one.)

Sendak did the pictures in the original series.  They got a new illustrator for this book, and it shows.   Just what is going on here with Grandpa bear?

No crosshatch, either.  Crosshatch is so, so charming when done well.

My daughter didn't really notice how bad it was, but she didn't ask to read it again, like the other books.

Frog and Toad

By Arnold Lobel

We got the box set of the Frog and Toad books ("Frog and Toad are Friends" isn't pictured) ages ago when I first found out I was pregnant.  It was an excuse to pick up one of my favourite set of books.

Some of the concepts in these books are just a bit beyond my daughter, but she likes the books anyway.  The conflicts are silly, and are rarely between the two main characters.  Even when they have an argument, it never affects their strong friendship.  How could any child dislike these books; It's a whole series of stories about two characters who are animals and who love each other and do everything together.

The text is big and the wording is very simple and just a little repetitive, so it's a great reader.  The stories are short which means that I don't have to read the whole book before bedtime if I don't want to.  And Toad is a bit of a grump sometimes, which saves it from being saccharine.