Hank and Fergus

 By Susin Nielsen-Fernlund nd Louise-Andrée Laliberté

Brutal.  Absolutely brutally bad.

Hank is a kid with a birthmark on his face who has an imaginary dog friend named Fergus.  It's made obvious in the beginning that he has this dog friend because he can't make real friends.  Probably because he gets teased about his birthmark and is embarrassed and then acts out.

 So a new kid moves in next door and tries to be friends with him and Hank gets all defensive and is horrible and mean to him.  So they're both horrible and mean to each other.  Which is usually how these things go down.

Then they make up and give each other presents in the most formulaic and artificial turnaround you could imagine.  See, making friends isn't that hard.  You just aren't trying!
No, I get it.  The moral of the story, that they explain in the last few sentences, is that having a birthmark on your face isn't so bad.  In fact, everyone has something weird going on.  Look at this kid; he's got a scar on his stomach!

This book won the Mr. Christie book award.

Snuggle Puppy

 By Sandra Boynton

Boynton does some nice baby books, some of which my kids are crazy about, some of which are funnier to read as an older kid or adult, but there are some real duds, too.  Like this one.

It comes with a CD with music that you listen to while you read the lyrics.

 I can't really be bothered to say a lot about this.  The drawing is pretty lazy.  Most of the book is just colourful text.  The text itself is really, really lazy rhyming.

But, I guess if you like this sort of thing, then whatever.  It's not the worst book I've ever read.

Cats are Cats

 By Valeri Gorbachev

This book was fantastic. I wasn't expecting much, and I was pleasantly surprised.  It's about a woman who buys a cat that turns into a tiger, but no matter how big it gets, she loves it anyway.  Very simple writing.  Cute drawings.  Comical scenes.

 Her surprised face makes no sense in half of these pictures.  She's been living with the tiger for how long and suddenly she's surprised that he's huge?  I don't get it.

They decide to get a pet fish in the end that turns out to not be a fish.  And of course, they keep it and love it anyway.

This is a great basic message for children told in a simple but comical way.  It's especially great because it isn't condescending in the least.

A Doll for Marie

 By Louise Fatio
Illustrated by Roger Duvoisin

I really liked this book, but my daughter did not.  It's probably meant for older kids.  The story was too long, and it was pretty slice-of-life, which is not her scene.


 An antique doll in a shop is too fancy for the poor little girl to afford.  But one day she gets bought and subsequently destroyed and the girl ends up finding it on the street.  She takes the doll in and fixes it up.

There are some great things about this book.  Firstly that it's basic endearing subject matter.  Girls love dolls, so a love story about a girl and a doll should be fairly well received.  Plus it's an indirect message to children that they are loved unconditionally.  It shows how the girl loves the doll by taking care of the doll.  All sorts of nice basic messages in a simple story.

I don't think my daughter appreciated the art, either, which is a shame, because it's good.  There's a good mix of colour and black and white.  It's very stylized.

This is definitely a book for kids 5 and up.  It's sophisticated and honest.  Not condescending in the least.

My Cousin Momo

 By Zachariah Ohora

I picked this book up because "No Fits Nilson" wasn't too bad, because I like the art style, and because the cover looked pretty great.

Yeah, I judged a book by its cover.  I want to like this book because I like the art.  And I feel like I'm crazy to hate on it so much, because the internet loves it.

 Here's Momo crying after his cousins bully him for being different.  I was really hoping, from the cover, that he'd be the cool cousin. He looks SO COOL.  But no.  Being fat and wearing sweatbands makes you a huge loser.

What really gets my goat is that the main characters are angry and annoyed with Momo for being weird or different.  We accept that kind of behaviour as normal with kids.  We expect it of kids.  I remember being a weird kid.  I wasn't that weird, but every once in a while I'd deviate from a teacher's instructions and do something creative and some kids were so ANGRY about it.  I feel like this book normalizes that kind of behaviour, while being so lazy in characterizing the 'different' and 'weird' Momo as just some fat nerd.

And while this book is obviously geared at kids who already behave poorly towards others, it is so condescending.  Oh, right, they're going to suddenly discover by the last page that their cousin is cool and start dressing like him?  No.  They won't.  They're going to feel like they can never really accept him without being cast out by the rest of their peer group and at best they'll maintain an awkward relationship with him up until adulthood when maybe they'll just pretend none of the bullying happened.

There's a place between disliking someone and emulating them.  It's called acceptance.  This book completely misses the point.

It is, however, highly marketable.

Funny Face

 By Anna Walker

This is a great book about facial expressions.  I really could have used this with my daughter when she was a baby.

My son actually likes this book a lot.  I say actually, because he isn't that keen on books.  He's only just a year old and kind of a clumsy maniac.  He has no interest in sitting still and reading.

But this book is simple and easy to follow.

 I change the text a bit so that I'm only saying the few words that he seems to know.  There's one character who has a "bunny face".  I feel like it's an inside joke or something.  It doesn't make sense, and even my daughter doesn't get the joke.  She's all, "That's not a face" and then the whole thing gets derailed into an argument.

There are a few too many pages of them dancing that are very similar.  We skip those sometimes, too.

But, overall, it's a very cute book.  I even like the pictures.