Gets sinister at the end.

Wow. I was not expecting the dark turn at the end.

Message

Be excited about things or nobody will care about you.

Prance, prance, I'm the Lord of the Forest!

Maybe the king needs to be taught a lesson, but The Lord of the Forest just gets to do whatever he wants because he's magical.

Message

Don't be a jerk or you might turn your daughter into a cabbage.

Japan's version of the fairy realm.

The framing device for the story basically lampshades the fact that the story has a weird ending, which is even weirder.

Message

Don't forget about those who you love. The kids explicitly point out the moral in the book.

Too-long Russian fable about the handsome guy getting the girl.

I guess it's saved from being a bad book to read to kids by virtue of not really being a book to read to kids.

Message

If you're good looking, you can get away with anything. Or, women are property.

As bland as the snow.

Very repetitive. I certainly couldn't read this to my kid because it would drive me crazy.

Message

Descriptive. None.

Feelgood story where hard work pays off.

There's no deus ex machina, contrived kind of stuff here like many children's books have, which is great.

Message

If you're good at something, it doesn't matter who you are. You don't have to be a specific kind of person to be good at something.

Toddlers don't need to see their failures depicted in a book.

It's a little bit silly, but not really all that funny.

Message

None.

Forced, annoying rhymes and not much of a story.

Perhaps the diction is intentionally childlike? But no, then they wouldn't have used the word “congregate.”

Message

None. Just descriptive.

Almost good.

If it had some better illustrations, this one might actually be good.

Message

Taking care of sick kids is hard.