That guy is so much tastier than me.
I don't even know where this book is going. I think it's trying to say that school is important, kind of? But it's also just one of those stories where it keeps one-upping itself in a really annoying, repetitive way, and then at the end the boy is in over his head. If he had only shot the rat.
School is important. Or, it's okay to kill talking animals.
Gosh darn these kids and their newfangled realism!
I seriously doubt that, as she says, "The barn that Jesus was born in would look like a cave to us." I'm pretty sure it wasn't a cave, but was a structure built by humans. People living in the time and culture of Jesus were not living in caves.
Gregorian music is the best music ever.
All koala bears look alike. (“That's racist!”)
What. This is a weird book. It feels like it should have a moral, but it absolutely does not. There's no way I can get a moral out of this, but it feels like it's moralizing about something. Maybe it's just a moral I can't see.
Parties are awesome?
Blurring the line between fantasy and reality since 1944.
It could be real. It could be a nonfiction story as far as I know. It's just really confusing, really wordy, really long.
None.
Insert joke involving bagpipes, cows, and deer.
The style of the illustrations isn't very modern but they're pretty. There's not much to it. It's just another book where somebody turns out to have hidden talents they weren't expecting to have.
Put your strengths to use. Or, don't be prejudiced against your neighbors.
The earth goes around the sun. In lots more words.
It's kind of cool, because it's fairly scientifically accurate, but it's not done in a very interesting way. It has good facts in it, but it's not very engaging, especially to kids nowadays because it's so wordy.
Teaches about the sun and the earth.
Ain't no party like a Scottish mill party!
It's kind of a Scottish nursery rhyme. It's not terribly interesting. I wouldn't have sought it out except it won some kind of award.
None.
Is it racist to say that Chinese people fly kites?
You would think that he would speak in perfect English, because it takes place in China, and they certainly wouldn't be speaking to each other in English. That's kind of a weird convention, but I'm not sure whether it's racist. It's just weird.
None.
The bicycle thief joke, but about wagons.
It's kind of an old story, but personalized in this version. Strangely, in a book about seeing small details, there's a couple of typos. There's not much to it.
Don't be stuck up. Or, anyone can be fooled.
Old Horny, king of the forest.
A series of prose poems about two baby deer growing up. It's pretty factual. For the most part the deer don't have that many human-like characteristics.
Deer are cool.
