A blog of my running thoughts while reading. *Warning: Spoilers*
This is a cute story, but there isn’t a whole lot to it. It felt like more of an outline for an episode of the cartoon than a stand-alone story fleshed out enough for publication. It really needed something more to make it interesting. The illustrations were nice, though.
This is a super fun book full of very funny spoofs of classic tales. I think many of them are actually kind of interesting, particularly “The Princess and the Bowling Ball”. It takes a story we all know and gives a logical explanation for some of the illogical events that take place in it. It’s fascinating. The illustrations are awesome, full of textures and patterns that are really visually interesting. This is an awesome book!
This is an awesome book! The pictures are great - very visual and striking. This is both fun for the number play and for the wacky story. It would be a blast to use this in a classroom, but it would work just as well just for fun. The size is a bit over-the-top, but not so much so as to make the book terribly unwieldy. It’s definitely fun!
This is a sweet story about Cinderella trying to plan her wedding. I like that it keeps true to her character (simple and small is always preferred) and “princessy” things are kind of minimized. The illustrations are cute, too. This isn’t an amazing book, but it is a really cute story and works well as an extension of the Cinderella story.
The planning portions of this book were more enjoyable for me than the series of battles at the end, but there was something pleasantly satisfying in how things turned out. I’m glad we got to see the battles and everything. It was fun, even if it did go much slower than the first three-quarters of the book. Eskkar and Trella were great characters to read about. I would definitely consider reading another book by this author, even if his research gaps did bug me, because his writing was extremely engaging!
I find it interesting to see Tina’s social activism and the way her ideas play into her stories. She clearly understood very early on and increasingly so over time that it’s not the quantity of female roles that matters so much, but the quality of those roles. This is really impressive thinking and especially so since she consistently defends it and backs it up with her own ideas. She must have been a fascinating child to study!
I really like this story and the characters in it. It’s funny how very ‘guy-like’ the writing is in many ways. Trella is a great character but it so feels like she was created and written by a man, not a woman. She’s a perfect mate, perfect wife, a walking goddess who only shows the chinks in her armor (of which there are only a few, and only charming ones) to her trusted husband. But it’s not just, or even primarily, that - it’s little things about the way she’s portrayed and the way her scenes are written. I’m not sure that I can really explain it well, at least right now. Regardless, I like her and Eskkar and the rest of the characters a lot. I’m enjoying this book way more than I ever expected to!
Since when are Amelia Bedelia books didactic? This was not great. I’ve not been pleased with the recent books in this series. The art makes little sense (everyone is dressed modernly except for Amelia Bedelia, who is still in her black and white maid uniform evoking at best the 1950s) and the stories are just long and boring. Classic Amelia Bedelia is awesome, so why are they messing it up so badly?
This is a fun, if somewhat nonsensical, book! I love that the authors thought outside the box to teach their lesson, but I kind of wish it was less focused on the lesson because the concept is otherwise pretty fun! The pictures are appropriate and interesting, although sometimes a little too busy. This is a fun book, but Punctuation Takes a Vacation was better!
Wemberly is really cute. The things she worried about are funny, but also realistic. This is a little too much of an “issue book” for me, but it is cute. I think I’m glad that Henkes is doing more non-mouse books lately! These are fun, but often I can think of a better book on the same issue (A.K.A. Scaredy Squirrel) that doesn’t feel so much like an issue book!