Review - Otto the Otter's Muddy Puddle

Otto the Otter's Muddy Puddle (The Rubbish Rebellion #2)
by Chez Rafter
illustrated by Daniela Frongia
Date: 2018
Publisher: Aurora House
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 40
Format: e-book
Source: NetGalley

Otto the otter is in trouble.
His pond is a mess and a muddle
From the trash of tourists who are less than subtle.
To save his home he needs some muscle.

Can Otto rescue his friends and together clean up this muddy puddle?

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This is the second book in this series. I just read the first one, and thought it had a number of issues. Unfortunately, this book simply magnifies those, making it a rather tedious read.

It's as if the author's trying to throw as many rhyming words as possible at the reader. As a result, the text doesn't flow. It almost sounds like terrible slam poetry:

A crusty shelled clam
needed a hand when her wandering clan
found holes in her dam.
She was in a jam, they were on the lam!

Like in Yapper the Unhappy Snapper, the main character also goes around saving his friends, often wielding a pair of scissors. In the previous book, the mess was plausible. In this book, it's not (unless Australians are a bunch of dirty pigs who just dump their trash wherever they feel like it). Multiple opened cans of beef stew, a table, and flip-flops in the park's pond? Really?

These books just aren't for me. Very young children might enjoy them, but I feel sorry for the parents who will have to read them aloud.

Thank you to NetGalley and Aurora House for providing a digital ARC.

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

Enjoyment: 0/5

Overall: 1 out of 5

Review - Yapper the Unhappy Snapper

Yapper the Unhappy Snapper (The Rubbish Rebellion #1)
by Chez Rafter
illustrated by Daniela Frongia
Date: 2018
Publisher: Aurora House
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 38
Format: e-book
Source: NetGalley

Yapper the snapper wants to play,
But all his friends are sick today
From the pollution in the ocean and waste in the waves.
To have some fun, first he must rescue his friends along the way.

Join Yapper on his heroic adventures to save the day.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

First of all, I find it really unfair (and slightly offensive) when picture books don't give proper credit to the illustrators. It's a picture book; without the illustrator, you basically have a few words.

That's especially true in this case. I think this is supposed to be a rhyming picture book, and some of the words do rhyme... but there's no meter or rhythm. In some cases, it was if the author was just looking for as many rhyming words as possible.

The illustrations are kind of cute, but most of them undermine the title. When Yapper goes around with a goofy grin on his face for the majority of the book, it's kind of difficult to remember I'm supposed to be reading about an unhappy fish.

And why is Yapper so unhappy? Because the sea is filled with garbage. So he sets about helping his friends free themselves from various bits of refuse (well, all except for the coral trout, which he saved from a fishing hook; this was supposed to be a book about polluted oceans, not vegetarianism). After each save, "they happily swam along". (So much for being an unhappy snapper.)

What really irked me, though, was the ending. After gathering up all the garbage, the sea creatures toss it up onto land into a precarious-looking bin on the beach. It has a recycling symbol on it, but the words refer to "garbage trash". It's true that we shouldn't be throwing our garbage into the water... but if you're going to have an environmental message, it should be more along the lines of "reduce, reuse, recycle"... not "throw it in the landfill".

I'm afraid this one is a bit of a miss for me. All the animals do is pass the garbage back onto the land. That's not exactly a solution to the problem.

Thank you to NetGalley and Aurora House for providing a digital ARC.

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

Enjoyment: 1/5

Overall: 1.71 out of 5