Where is a good editor when you need one? Truthfully I’m not exactly sure what an editor does but with a very small amount of changes this would go from a great book to an excellent one.
-Toads are not green, this looks like a frog to me. And every kid I’ve ever known thinks that green= frog, brown=toad, why mess with that?
-Bees do not have stinger noses, I dislike improper anatomy on animals (or bugs) for no good reason. Cowboy boots, fine but get that stinger on the other end.
-And finally, if the books follows the same rhyming pattern the whole way through why do you mess it up on the last page?!?!
road-toad
goo-shrew
loose-goose
free-bee
go-crow
stuck-truck
air -bear
stuck-hen — WHAT?!!?
Those problems aside this book has a great chanty, jaunty, rhymey, rhythmy, flow to it (that’s a technical term).
I like the pictures (other than above mentioned problems) and Ivy likes it enough we’ve been reading it multiple times in a row.
So even with the above problems…
Would I recommend it? Yes, unless you are one who reads books in a flat monotone, this requires that chanty, jaunty, rhymey, rhythm in order to be great.
I think the misplacement of the bee’s stinger is akin to Picasso’s use of cubism, except that Picasso convinced people that he understood the “rules” of visual art before breaking them.
The cowboy boots are cute because we are sharing a joke with the illustrator. The toad’s color and stinger make us uneasy because we are not convinced that the illustrator understands the rules of amphibians and insects. I agree that this is annoying.
Couldn’t have said it better myself!