Review - Time for Margot to Go to Bed

Time for Margot to Go to Bed (Margot the Groundhog and Her North American Squirrel Family #3)
by Lieve Snellings
Date: 2019
Publisher: Lieve Snellings
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 38
Format: e-book
Source: NetGalley

She cries and asks how she can survive next winter? Lucky she has friends.

Margot is sad because she has to start hibernation. That is very unusual! Her friends help her find out why she's in tears. Together they find some solutions, and soon Margot can go to sleep with a smile.

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(synopsis from Goodreads)

I'm not quite sure what to make of this one. It's kind of bad. But I also enjoyed it, perhaps way more than I should have. What's a reviewer to do?

This book has a lot of weak spots. The writing is all over the place as far as perspective. The story starts out with Margot narrating, then switches to an unknown narrator who refers to Margot in the third person. Margot's speech is never set off with quotation marks, which is odd. The photos are nice, but the Photoshop work is laughably bad.

On the other hand, the story is sweet and offers some nice facts about groundhogs. And the terrible Photoshop work actually made me laugh out loud. It was the goose working for Canada Post--complete with hat and mail bag--that got me. And how can you not laugh at a chipmunk trying to set up Wi-Fi? This is one of those cases of "it's so bad it's good"... and I'm sure children and adults alike are going to get a chuckle.

This is the third book in the series, so maybe the confused writing style has already been established. That's kind of a shame, because with a little bit of polishing, this could be a great humourous storybook for kids that also teaches them a bit about groundhogs and hibernation.

Thank you to NetGalley and Lieve Snellings for providing a digital ARC.

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

Enjoyment: 4/5

Overall: 3.17 out of 5