Please, stop. Just stop.

It just irritates me. It's an irritating book. It's definitely not "good", but I'm not sure it's a "bad" book: it doesn't try to communicate a bad message. It's just profoundly irritating. So I guess it goes into the mediocre category. I certainly wouldn't read this because it would drive me crazy, but if somebody else is able to ignore that, it's not a terrible message.

Message

Always say please after every request.

Not to be confused with "Moo, Baa, La La La."

It's pretty. I can see why people like it. It's simple and there's a sparse quality to it, despite the richness of illustrations. Not very much is happening, but it uses its several pages to give a lot of detail about how the main character is feeling. The emotions and the body language that she has are very critical to telling the story.

Message

Don't give up, you're not alone.

I bet a lot of creative kids actually do this, too.

I love this book. It's just awesome. Quite often, I've been looking forward to a book based on the title and concept, only to be disappointed by the execution, but this book did not disappoint. I really enjoyed what they did with this book.

Message

Make the most of what you've got.

When you're a victim of discrimination, banging on the drums all day is a kind of work.

It's inspired by the true story of a Chinese-African Cuban girl, Millo Castro Zaldarriaga, from 1932. The story is that a girl wants to play the drums, but where she lives, people believe that only boys should play drums. So she dreams about it and listens to the music and imagines herself playing music for a long time, and then eventually she just decides she's gonna play the drums and she plays them.

Message

Don't give up on your dreams just because people say that they're unreasonable.

Not sure what this one is trying to say.

Honestly, I don't find them very cute. I do like the inclusion of the relatively realistic looking construction equipment, but I was kind of disappointed by this book. I hoped that it would be more interesting than this, and the heavy machinery just kind of comes out of nowhere.

Message

Don't be mean.

Boring, boring penguins. What are they snoozing?

I think you kind of have to be a penguin fan going into this. Obviously the syntax is very simple. Every page has exactly two words on it. There's no real information about penguins. There's nothing in here about what they eat, how they raise their young, or the fact that they can't fly or anything like that.

Message

Penguins do lots of things.

BUURP

It's weird. It's silly. It's got one gimmick to it, and it does it well, but it's still just one gimmick.

Message

None.

The umbrella is the last component of the ghastly ritual.

Every time you can see her face, pretty much all you can see is these solid black eyes, with a little bit of eyelash at the edge. Like this girl has been possessed by demons. I just do not care for the art style of this artist, and the story uses far too many words to tell this completely trivial story.

Message

Umbrellas can only be used on rainy days. Or, umbrellas are awesome.

Anti-toad propaganda.

It's not very educational. It's not a very long story. It's just too simplistic. Most of it is pretty boring and mundane.

Message

Some toads taste disgusting.

Take a walk on the wild side.

Maybe there's some kind of metaphor here about cultural assimilation? It's really hard to tell what this author was intending exactly. The only information we get about her in the back of the book is that it's her first book and that she was born in Hawaii. It is pretty, though.

Message

Wild creatures should be left in the wild.