Review - If You Give a Deer a Carrot

If You Give a Deer a Carrot
by Paul Pineapple
illustrated by Balarupa Studio
Date: 2020
Publisher: Paul Pineapple
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 15
Format: e-book
Source: Amazon.ca

Feeding deer leads to lunacy -- but it only gets worse when you stop!

A girl feeds a deer on her front lawn. The next day there are two deer...a family...a herd. A stag crashes through her window. A herd chases her car. Her parents are upset. Her sister is insanely jealous. But if she stops handing out carrots, what kind of mischief will those deer get into next?

Written in rhyming quatrains, with ebullient, absurd illustrations, If You Give a Deer a Carrot will make your kids spit out their milk laughing.

Order If You Give a Deer a Carrot and share a laugh with your kids today.

(synopsis from Amazon.ca; see it on Goodreads)

Quite frankly, I'm surprised Mr. Pineapple hasn't been sued.

If You Give a Deer a Carrot has the same premise (and even the same title structure) as Laura Joffe Numeroff's If You Give... series in which one act of giving leads to a cascade of related events. Unfortunately, it doesn't measure up. It doesn't even come close.

The meter is off. The illustrations are boring. The deer are more scary than cute. I thought maybe this was going to be a parody with the deer going postal on the humans... but then I remembered that this was a children's book. (Too bad. That could've been hilarious.)

Premise: 2/5
Meter: 2/5
Writing: 2/5
Illustrations: 2/5
Originality: 0/5

Enjoyment: 1/5

Overall: 1.43 out of 5