Thursday, February 14, 2019

Review - 10 Valentine Friends

10 Valentine Friends
by Janet Schulman
illustrated by Linda Davick
Date: 2011
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 32
Format: e-book
Source: library

It's Valentine's Day and the 10 little neighbors in this book are busy making Valentines for their closest friends.

A dinosaur card, thinks little Pete,
My pal Max would find really neat.

Will everyone get a Valentine at the big Valentine's Day party? You can count on it!

With its fun counting element, bouncy text, and adorable illustrations, this book is the perfect gift for young lovebugs.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This is a rather weak counting book with clumsy rhymes and kind of creepy pictures (at least, I thought some of the kids were creepy; I think it's the teeth). I did like seeing the ten valentines build up as I went through the pages, but the formatting on the e-book was so bad that I was kind of confused throughout; the blocks of text were always a page ahead of the pictures, so it took me a moment to figure out why it seemed wrong. Also, the kids' names are probably going to cause frustration and/or confusion. Are kids who are young enough to need a counting book going to be able to read and pronounce names like Priscilla, Aloysius, and Alexandra?

As a picture book, it doesn't really work for me because I don't like the pictures. Kids might have some fun counting the silly valentines, but there are stronger counting books out there (hopefully with better formatting, at least for the e-book version).

Premise: 3/5
Meter: 2/5
Writing: 2/5
Illustrations: 2/5
Originality: 2/5

Enjoyment: 2/5

Overall: 2.14 out of 5

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