Review - Marie's Big Adieu

Marie's Big Adieu
by Tamara Rittershaus
illustrated by Giulia Iacopini
Date: 2020
Publisher: PenMagicBooks LLC
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 20
Format: e-book
Source: Amazon.ca

Moving is hard, especially when you leave your best friend behind. When Marie moves from the country to the city, will she have to say goodbye to her friend forever?

A rhyming story of friendship for anyone who's said a big adieu.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

Marie's Big Adieu is a sweet little story about friendship.

Marie and Lorelei are best friends who do everything together. One day, Marie's father tells her that he's taken a job in the city and they have to move away. Marie is heartbroken at leaving her best friend behind. At the park near her new home, she meets a little girl named Rosalie and they hit it off. But the thought of being best friends with someone new doesn't sit right with Marie. It takes a conversation with Lorelei to convince her that a new friendship can be a good thing.

Marie's loyalty to her friend comes across well on the pages, and her predicament is very relatable. The story itself is sweet, and told in rhyming verse with near-perfect meter. There's a luminous quality to the cartoon-like illustrations that's quite appealing; I enjoyed looking at the pictures as much as I enjoyed reading the story.

Overall, this is a strong book about friendship, loyalty, and opening yourself up to new people and experiences.

Quotable moment:

Premise: 4/5
Meter: 5/5
Writing: 4/5
Illustrations: 4/5
Originality: 3/5

Enjoyment: 4/5

Overall: 4 out of 5

Review - Little Oink

Little Oink (Little Books)
by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
illustrated by Jen Corace
Date: 2009
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 36
Format: e-book
Source: Amazon.ca

Little Oink is a neat little fellow. Clean, clean, clean, that's all he wants to do. But Mama and Papa won't have it! They say in order to be a proper pig he has to learn to make a proper mess. What's a little pig to do?

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This is a story about a tidy little pig who balks at his parents' orders to make a mess. He just wants to be neat like all his non-pig friends!

Little Oink is in the same vein as Little Pea, except that instead of a vegetable who won't eat his sweets, we have a pig who won't make a mess. These books are cute in that they turn the expected on its head. Kids (and parents) are likely to get a giggle out of the absurdity of the situations.

There's really not a lot of plot, but the premise is delightful. There's apparently another book in the series called Little Hoot that deals with an owl who doesn't want to stay up late, which I definitely want to read now. I'll have to see if I can get my hands on a copy.

Quotable moment:

Premise: 4/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 4/5
Illustrations: 3/5
Originality: 3/5

Enjoyment: 4/5

Overall: 3.67 out of 5

Review - Every Night Is Pizza Night

Every Night Is Pizza Night
by J. Kenji López-Alt
illustrated by Gianna Ruggiero
Date: 2020
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 48
Format: e-book
Source: library

Pipo thinks that pizza is the best. No, Pipo knows that pizza is the best. It is scientific fact. But when she sets out on a neighborhood-spanning quest to prove it, she discovers that "best" might not mean what she thought it meant.

Join Pipo as she cooks new foods with her friends Eugene, Farah, Dakota, and Ronnie and Donnie. Each eating experiment delights and stuns her taste buds. Is a family recipe for bibimbap better than pizza? What about a Moroccan tagine that reminds you of home? Or is the best food in the world the kind of food you share with the people you love?

Warm and funny, with bright, whimsical illustrations by Gianna Ruggiero, Every Night Is Pizza Night is a story about open-mindedness, community, and family. With a bonus pizza recipe for young readers to cook with their parents, Every Night Is Pizza Night will make even the pickiest eaters hungry for something new.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

Pipo loves pizza. She thinks it's the best thing in the world. When presented with the idea that it might not be, she decides to collect some data to try to support her conclusion. Along the way, she encounters various foods such as bibimbap, tagine, and dumplings, and enjoys them all. But are they as good as pizza?

The idea here is cute, but I couldn't wholeheartedly enjoy this one. Pipo's obsession with pizza is tiresome (and I don't understand why her parents continually capitulate). Her attitude is also off-putting, as at one point she tells a dumpling purveyor to "back off" when he warns her about the dumplings being really juicy. (Rude little brat.) The turn-around of attitude at the end is a bit confusing. Does she or doesn't she admit that other foods can be "the best"? I'm still not sure.

The other issue I had with this one is the way the text is laid out on the pages. It's not always clear what order you're supposed to read the groups of words. I guess you take the cue from the illustrations, but even so, it's clumsy in spots.

There's a recipe for pizza at the end, which is kind of nice. And the book definitely does introduce some foods that Western pizza-obsessed kids might not have heard of. But its weaknesses meant that I couldn't enjoy this one as much as I would've liked. (Although, I do now have a hankering for some dumplings!)

Premise: 4/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 3/5
Illustrations: 3/5
Originality: 3/5

Enjoyment: 2/5

Overall: 2.83 out of 5

Review - Little Bear's Treasures

Little Bear's Treasures
by Stella Dreis
Date: 2020
Publisher: Greystone Kids
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 36
Format: e-book
Source: library

A book to inspire children to hunt for treasures in the natural world.

Little Bear is a treasure finder. And he finds the most wonderful things: a shiny button, a tickly feather, a cozy hiding place, a tree to scratch, and even a shy, soft piece of lint. The other animals, however, don’t understand Little Bear’s treasures. “Just junk,” they say. Except for one… When Little Bear meets Little Bird, it’s the beginning of a wonderful friendship. Together, Little Bear just might discover his best treasure yet.

Poetic, affectionate, funny, and captivatingly illustrated, this gorgeous picture book is a treasure itself.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

What a cute book! This is about appreciating the little things and finding special friends to share that appreciation with.

Little Bear finds lots of treasures. But the other animals don't get it, and they think his finds are junk. Little Bear is a little disheartened... until he meets Little Bird, whose enthusiasm for finding treasure is almost as big as Little Bear's. Together, they find all sorts of wonderful things, and Little Bear realizes that his new friend is a treasure, too.

The illustrations are really adorable, soft and dreamy with just the right touch of whimsy. The text is spare but poetic and works really well to tell the simple story.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend this one. I can see it working well in a homeschool setting in a lesson about finding treasures in the great outdoors.

Quotable moment:

Premise: 4/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 4/5
Illustrations: 4/5
Originality: 4/5

Enjoyment: 4/5

Overall: 4 out of 5

Review - The Bees

The Bees (Down in the Garden #1)
by DC Swain
illustrated by Anna Bonita
Date: 2015
Publisher: DC Swain
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 24
Format: e-book
Source: Kobo

Down in the garden beyond the apple trees,
is a fading blue hive, full of busy bees...

Join the bees down in the garden on a day of fun, danger and adventure in this beautifully illustrated picture book.

With a whimsical story and crisp, original illustrations, this is a story your children will want to read again and again.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This is a rhyming picture book about bees. It's not so much a story as it is a highly fictionalized "day in the life" of some bees. The pictures are cute and the meter is not so terrible as to be off-putting (although it isn't great). Young children might enjoy this one if they're curious about bees.

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

Enjoyment: 2/5

Overall: 2.71 out of 5

Review - Bearded

Bearded
by Jeremy Billups
Date: 2015
Publisher: Billups Creative, LLC
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 40
Format: e-book
Source: iBooks

In this delightful and silly story written and illustrated by Jeremy Billups you'll get to meet a bear with a beard and tag along as he becomes rich and famous, wins beard-wrestling matches, gets knighted by a queen and meets other animals from all over the world with their very own beards.

How long is this bear's beard? Are there really other animals with beards? And what exactly is this bear keeping tucked away in his beard?

This picture book about kindness is perfect as a children's bedtime story and for fans of humorous books that encourage imagination and play such as Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Sciezka and Lane Smith, and Oliver Jeffers' Stuck, The Incredible Book Eating Boy, Lost and Found, and This Moose Belongs to Me.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This is a bizarre little picture book. Okay, the bear has a beard. Why? I have no idea. He's got lots of friends with beards, and those beards make sense. But, for some reason, the bear has a long beard that he stores stuff in.

This probably would've worked better for me if the meter had been better. It's just so off. If I tried to read this aloud, I'd be stumbling over the words the whole time. I love rhyming picture books when they're done well. But they need to flow. This one doesn't.

Kids might get a giggle out of the premise. But I wouldn't recommend trying to read this one aloud.

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

Enjoyment: 2/5

Overall: 2.29 out of 5

Review - Emeline and the Golden Ukulele

Emeline and the Golden Ukulele
by Susan Kinsey
Date: 2020
Publisher: BooksGoSocial
Reading level: C
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 37
Format: e-book
Source: NetGalley

The Talented Tiara contest is only days away before Emeline's ukulele breaks. Disappointed she won't be able to enter, the sea fortune tellers assures her there is another way. Sent on a journey through the bottom of the sea, Emeline must find the sea wizard's golden ukulele to borrow on one condition--she must believe in magic. When a jealous classmate tries to stop her, Emeline must unite with her friends, believe in herself, and enter the Talented Tiara contest without any self doubt. Read Emeline and the Golden Ukulele and enjoy this short, witty chapter book to build reading skills, imagination, and embrace your love for the mermaids under the sea.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

Drawn in by the cute cover, I was expecting a simple chapter book about mermaids. Unfortunately, this is a book full of technical issues so blatant as to be a huge distraction. And the story is too weak to offer much redemption.

Emeline is a mermaid who wants to enter the Talented Tiara contest. No, it's not a contest for talented tiaras. It's a talent contest for undersea creatures where the prize is a tiara. Emeline wants to play her ukulele, but when she tries out for the contest, a string breaks. This leads her to the other side of the black rocks to borrow a sea wizard's golden ukulele, which can only be played if she has the love of music in her heart. On her way, she must try to ignore a mean girl named Pearl who seeks to undermine her confidence.

To begin with, the whole premise is really weak. Emeline's ukulele pops a string... and somehow this is a big deal. The octopus at the repair shop tells her it'll take four days to fix (a broken string takes four days to fix?!) but the talent show is in three days (except, it isn't; the author messed up the timeline). Wouldn't a broken ukulele neck have made more sense? At the end of the story, the resolution to the main character's problem is hackneyed and unrealistic. (Nobody would disqualify a contestant simply for trash-talking!)

The author seemed to forget her setting throughout the book. The text is continually describing smells. The girls eat popcorn and cotton candy at the fair. (Do you know what happens when either of those things hit water?) Emeline's mother somehow made pancakes. (How do you get the batter to stay in one place and not go floating off on the currents?) For that matter, how do you twirl a baton underwater with all that friction? And, at one point, Emeline and her friend were sitting under a tree. There are trees at the bottom of the sea?

But that's not even the worst of it. This is probably the most badly written book I've read all year. First, it comes across as a school assignment where the teacher implored the students to avoid the words "said" and "asked" as much as possible. I counted twenty alternate dialogue tags in the first chapter alone! That's extremely distracting. And, at times, the tags didn't even make sense in context. People "groaned" when they didn't seem to be particularly distressed about anything, or "cooed" just for the heck of it. Characters sometimes performed actions that seemed awfully random, like raising their hands for no reason or putting their hand on top of their head; it was almost as if the author thought there should be some sort of action, but couldn't think of anything appropriate for the moment.

And then there were the typos. Oh, the typos. "An ukulele" popped up at one point. "Weary" was used when it seemed "wary" was the word the author was going for (and, even so, I think the word she actually needed was "disappointed"). Emeline was referred to as "petty" when it should've been "pretty". And Mrs. Gills turned into Mrs. Gill once thanks to a misplaced apostrophe. I kind of lost count of all the errors after a certain point, and now I'm annoyed. This book had zero editing (and, if it did, the author needs to ask for a refund).

Had the message been stellar, I might've been willing to overlook some of the technical issues. After all, those are easily fixed. But the characters aren't appealing (Emeline is a wishy-washy sort of heroine who's easily swayed by a few unkind words that she knows aren't even true) and the resolution is way too pat (would Emeline have won if Pearl hadn't been disqualified for the flimsiest of reasons?).

I can't recommend this one at all.

Thank you to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for providing a digital ARC.

Premise: 2/5
Plot: 2/5
Characters: 1/5
Pace: 2/5
Writing: 0/5
Editing: 0/5
Originality: 2/5
Enjoyment: 1/5

Overall Rating: 1.25 out of 5 ladybugs