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.

Tim and Charlotte

 By Edward Ardizzone

This book is epic.  My daughter makes me read it repeatedly and is on the edge of her seat every time.  A girl washes up on shore unconscious.  She awakes to find her memory lost.  When she finally remembers who she is, she must leave her newfound friends forever to return to her former life.

It's a real fairy tale, with the main character, Charlotte, an orphaned heiress, and Tim a rough and tumble lower class boy who lives on the seaside.

 A lot of the story is predictable, but still a thrilling read.  There is very real danger, something very rarely found in children's books.

There is a fight.  Tim fights for his and Charlotte's honour and is nearly beaten.  They describe him as being very noble.

It's an old book, and this kind of passage wouldn't fly these days.  But I don't mind.  It's not like I can't talk to my kids about these passages after we've read the book.

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.

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. 

Jack

 By Tomie DePaola

I love this author.  I wasn't expecting much from this book.  And there wasn't much to it.

 I guess it's a book about animal noises?  And some people love them and some people hate them? 
Jack and all of his animal friends go to the city to live in a big apartment building together.  And that's the plot.

They just ask the king for an apartment, and the king gives them the key for one in the city.  The end.

But, you know, the pictures are nice.

Martha Speaks

 By Susan Meddaugh

This is a classic.  It has its own show.  I'd heard of the book first, but I saw the show before I read it.  The show is delightful.  The book is less so, but only because the developments that were made later in the series really add a lot to it.  As a book on its own with no expectations, it's still fantastic.

The idea of alphabet soup going to Martha's brain instead of her stomach is so simple and ridiculous that there's no need to question it.

 There isn't  lot of plot.  It's just a book about all the adult things that Martha can do that are silly.  She eventually upsets her owners who very rudely tell her to shut up.

But she redeems herself by getting a burglar arrested.

I'm really tired of this plot point in books about pets at this point.  But what are you going to do.  I'm also really disappointed that the original has the family drawn as a ginger haired white family, while in the cartoon they're biracial.  I was really hoping the book would be the same.  But I guess that would be too wild.

It's still a good book.

Clementine in the City

 By Jesse Hartland

I have mixed feelings about this one.  My daughter begged me to renew it because she loves it so much.  It's written with printed text and hand writing, and the pages are sometimes one big picture and sometimes a collage of little pictures.  It's the story of a dog who goes to the city to get away from the boring suburbs.

 I don't really care for the story so much, but I do like how the character, Clementine, introduces herself on the fourth page or so.  I think the pacing is good, and the layout is great.  There's a new idea every two pages, which works well for a young kid's attention span.  The art is pretty decent, too.

The ending is particularly dull, though.  I think it would have been fine if it was just the story of the dog in the city meeting people and living, and maybe even working terrible jobs.  Instead, at the last minute they really tried to have a climax and some denouement.  It worked out fine, but it could have been better if it had been left more abstract and slice-of-life.

The Tiger and the Dried Persimmon

 By Janie Jaehyun Park

This was a great find.  I really picked it up because of the cover.  Plus, it's a Korean folk-tale told by a Korean person. That alone made it seem promising.

The story is of a foolish tiger that becomes confused when he overhears a mother talking to her child and believes that the dried persimmon is a fierce monster.  As he is heading home, a cattle thief mistakes him for an ox.  Comedy ensues!

 The paintings are a fantastic blend of modern technique and traditional shapes and patterns.  Every drawing of the tiger has different proportions, making him a bit cartoony and very expressive.

I love this drawing of the cattle thief.  So much.  This book was a hit with the kids, too.

Do Not Open

 By Brinton Turkle

This book was so fantastic.  And we utterly destroyed it with a cup of tea.  Tragedy.

It's about a woman who lives alone by the beach with a cat and collects odds and ends

 The pictures are fantastic.  I yearn for a house decorated like hers.  Half of the book is just describing their lazy lifestyle, retired in a one bedroom cabin by the ocean listening to storms together.

The last few pages has them discovering a bottle with a monster inside.  The woman is not in the least bit afraid and defeats it easily.  She's granted a wish as a reward.

The pictures here are a little over the top and probably not appropriate for an anxious younger child, but the whole book is about conquering your fears, so it's a good book for anxious kids, too.

My severely anxious child loved this book.  But she's starting to develop an interest in scary things.

When Elephant Met Giraffe

 By Paul Gude

I was pretty unimpressed by this book.  It's about an elephant who meets a mute giraffe and becomes friends with him after accepting his silence.

 The drawings are supposed to be cute, and I guess they'd be fine if the story was any good.  The brevity of the sentences and chapters is supposed to be cute, too, but nothing really happens.

Oh look, one of them wants to be a pirate, and the other a clown, so they have a fight and then decide to play pirates and clowns together.

A lot of these types of stories teaching kids how to be good friends are told much better in other books.  The pirate/clown thing was meant as an easy laugh, but it wasn't funny. 
My daughter loved this book, probably because of the pictures and the animals involved.  I couldn't bring myself to read it twice.

The Tiny Seed

 Eric Carle

A lot of these books are available as big hardcover books, but I like the board books better.  This one doesn't really make sense for the under two crowd, but it has nice colours and it can be pulled at and chewed on this way.  Having smaller pages doesn't take away from the art, and they didn't edit the books when they made them smaller.

This one is all about seeds from a flower going through all the seasons and finally falling to the ground and making a new flower.  It's about all the seeds that don't make it and why they don't make it.

And then there's this page near the end about how the flower is so big and everyone thinks it's so amazing.  This could have been left out.  My kids just don't care about that.

And then the flower dies and sends off new seeds, continuing the cycle.  It's a good teaching book about the life cycle of plants.

A la Ferme

 Published by Chantecler

There is no writer credited for this book.  This company seems to still be publishing, but the books are all pretty random and not categorized in levels like the scholastic books are.

It's a real shame, because we love this book so much.

Because it's on a farm, the animals, activities and concepts are all words that we've covered while learning general vocabulary.  There are a few crazy words in there, but that's good.

Bread and Jam for Frances

 By Russell Hoban
Illustrated by Lillian Hoban

This is a classic.  Francis is a great character, and we love, love, love this particular story.  It's another one of those "teach your kid to love food" books.  Except it isn't about the parent knowing that the child is just faking their dislike of anything but chicken strips.

 In this particular story, Francis just doesn't like being adventurous with food and is satisfied with the predictability of bread and jam.  Her parents let her eat bread and jam forever and eat tasty other things in front of her until she breaks down and cries.  It's a bit much.  But it's told in a charming enough way that I don't mind reading it anyway.  And Francis is delighted in the end to go to school and have a large and varied lunch that rivals her friend Albert's.

Now, I know kids like this, and my own kids are picky some days because they don't feel like being adventurous, and I get it.  I give them opportunities to try things without forcing them, but if I know that she's being unreasonable then I will put my foot down and force her to take a bite.  She can always ask for things that aren't on the table as long as she makes some effort towards something on her plate, which ultimately ends up in her discovering that she actually likes what I've made for dinner, anyway.  We know eachother's limits and we both make compromises.

And you know what?  Treating my kids fairly and letting them decide what they like and don't like and giving them options has worked great.  Occasionally forcing or bribing them to try things has worked out fine, too.  I guess the key thing is to know your kids and to work out a tactic that they won't find frustrating.

Books about kids with bad habits don't work.  Not unless they have a direct message to the reader about how they should change their ways.  Subtlety like this goes right over my three year old's head.

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.

The Doorbell Rang

 By Pat Hutchins

This book was almost good.  My daughter loved it for the direct repetition on each page.  Plus it has a catch at the end; the doorbell rings, but they don't tell you who it is.  "BUT WHO IS AT THE DOOR?"  She would yell at me, never satisfied with my answer.

My husband, on the other hand, found it too repetitive and a little bit creepy.  He also hated the art.

It's a math story about 12 cookies divided many different ways.  But they don't tell you that it's 12 cookies, so maybe it could be a fun math game for an older kid?  maybe.

Personally I didn't love it or hate it.  But I didn't keep it in the house for very long, because I think owning it and reading it every single night would wear on me.

The Berenstain Bears Go Out for the Team

By Stan and Jan Barenstain

I love baseball.  I grew up playing little league.  I was really, really bad at it, and my mother always wondered if it was a waste of time, but I developed some skill playing it, and I know the rules really well, so I don't think it was.

The only thing I hated about it was that I always got stuck in the outfield (because I couldn't catch the ball) and they always bemoaned when I went up to bat (because I couldn't hit the ball).

The coach would say, "oh, but Left Field is so important!  Sometimes the ball rolls out there!  Keep your eyes peeled!"  Sure I wasn't athletic, but I wasn't stupid, either.

 Unlike little league, this book isn't about winning or losing, it's about the AWFUL PRESSURE that comes with playing team sports, and how you should never succumb to it and just have fun instead.

And, on the side, there's a scene where sister bear accuses brother bear of being sexist, and Mother bear qualifies his remarks in a way that makes perfect sense.

They also put Brother and Sister on the same team.  And make sure to mention that Sister is pretty awesome at baseball, too, even though she's younger.  Take that Babar, always having the boys play every sport while the one girl remains consistently and conspicuously absent!  (I love Babar so much but it is, admittedly, a colonialist, sexist mess.)

Brother Bear and Sister Bear make it to the team!  And Mama stands up and yells at the umpire over a call that she doesn't agree with!  And Sister Bear, all embarrassed, tells her mother to chill!  And that's the end.

Really.  You never find out if they win or lose.  Because, who cares about that, anyway?

The Tiger Who Came to Tea

 By Judith Kerr

It finally came in the mail!  We love this book.

It's about a girl and her mum who let a tiger in to tea and he eats them out of house and home.

 But he's so polite, and of course they let him.  When their father comes home he decides that they had better have dinner at a cafe instead.

The girl cuddles with the tiger throughout the entire visit, and it's pretty adorable.  We've had this one for a day and I've read it five times already.

Jack and the Beanstalk

 By Rosemary Wells and Norman Messenger

I can't tell who wrote the book and who drew the pictures.  It looks like they both wrote it?  Maybe they both worked on the pictures?

The pictures are pretty decent.  I don't mind them.  And the writing is simple enough to understand, so I'm really happy about that.  I want to introduce my daughter to these stories as young as I can because we come across the references so often and I'd really like her to be able to understand those references.

Every time I run into this story it's told in the most long-winded fashion.  The only version that she was familiar with before this was the Mickey Mouse cartoon.  It isn't that bad, but I really can't stand that stupid harp.

This version has Jack living with his mother and rescuing his father, which is more exciting.  And it has the hen laying the golden eggs as well, which the Disney version left out.