Review - Elphie and Dad go on an Epic Adventure

Elphie and Dad go on an Epic Adventure (Elphie's books #1)
by Hagit R. Oron
illustrated by Or Oron
Date: 2016
Publisher: Orons
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 25
Format: e-book
Source: Kobo

For Elphie, everything is an adventure.
But dad is cautious.
Is dad going to join Elphie on his quest or is the trip to the shop going to be dull and boring?
Join Elphie and dad to find out!

"Elphie and dad go on an epic adventure" is a fun beautifully illustrated book that addresses kids and parents alike. It shows how you can transform everyday chores into exciting adventures.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

I've had this one kicking around in my Kobo account for a while. It must've been a freebie I picked up at some point, because I generally don't spend money on kids' e-books. Boy, am I ever glad I didn't spend anything on it except for time; like most self-published books I've read, it's pretty bad.

The writing didn't seem too awful at the beginning, but after a few pages it became glaringly bad. I don't understand why authors have such a difficult time punctuating dialogue. Apparently, knowing when to use a comma versus a period is really hard. So is knowing when to capitalize words that come after punctuation. For some reason, all the dialogue in this book is italicized as well. Now, I've seen books that italicize dialogue, but it's a stylistic choice used to set off the dialogue if there's no punctuation. This book's dialogue has punctuation, so the italics are redundant and unnecessary.

The story is bland and uninteresting. Some adults seem to have this idea that kids are stupid, and then we get books like this that are annoyingly condescending. Mind you, I guess if a child is stupid enough to run in front of an easily visible red car, he's stupid enough to attack a bush with a cardboard sword, thinking it's a dragon. (The illustrator could've at least made the bush look like a dragon.) The father is overprotective to the point where he starts to kill his child's spirit with his constant admonishments. You can actually see this in the book! I don't know what the point of that is supposed to be...

The illustrations are boring, flat, and look like they were done in a few minutes with MS Paint. I'm really tired of seeing this in self-published books. It doesn't look professional at all.

To top it all off, my copy has all the pages backwards. Judging by the names of the authors, I wonder if they're Israeli... which makes the right-to-left format make a little more sense. Still, the book is in English, so it's just weird... and is probably going to confuse the heck out of most English-speaking children who pick it up.

Overall, this is one of the weakest picture books I've read recently. It's not the worst self-published picture book I've ever read... but I'm not sure that's exactly a compliment, either.

Premise: 2/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 1/5
Illustrations: 1/5
Originality: 2/5

Enjoyment: 0/5

Overall: 1 out of 5