Not as good as the game “3 in Three”. That game rocks.
It's not a bad book, but it's boring and very dated. It's not that common for modern children to have experienced sheep in a meadow, or gourds drying. Or writing on a slate.
None.
Camp! Grandparents! Fun!
It's nothing too deep, but it's still a good message. The art is fun to look at and interesting to the eye, with word balloons to read and lots of color. It's a pretty realistic portrayal of two boys hanging out together and the kinds of things they would say.
It's fun to play with your friends.
Poetic poem is poetic.
It's cute. It's got an inclusive message without being over the top, which is pretty nice.
We're all in this together. Or, look at the world from different perspectives.
On the plus side, we got a moon out of it.
It's very common in fables and myths, that idea of a set number of people with specific talents that all come in handy in a very contrived situation. It happens in The Seven Simeons, and it happens in The Five Chinese Brothers.
None.
It's better to be hated than to be trapped forever in an immortal, immobile body.
It's got a very clear message of "the grass is always greener on the other side". Leo Lionni's illustrations made of collages and patterns are really nice to look at, but the story isn't really very interesting or better than books like The Velveteen Rabbit.
It always feels like other people have a better life than you, but that's not true.
If all the french fries were one french fry...
I guess it's a nursery rhyme. It's a very meandering hypothetical that doesn't go anywhere or have any kind of relation to reality. Everything about this book is weird.
None.
TL;DR.
Despite winning a Caldecott Honor, this book is far too long and wordy to read to a child. It's 96 pages long, and the illustrations are mostly in the margins. This is really a novella-length biography, not a picture book. So it's not just wordy, but very long.
Unknown.
Well written but terribly dated.
I'd say the quality is comparable to Dr. Seuss's ABCs, but with no nonsense words. Everything's pretty straightforward, with things that kids-- of the time-- would actually encounter. Some things that kids would still encounter. But you know, there's not a lot of organ grinders nowadays.
None.
Hey kid, want to come back to my place and see my sea lion?
It's interesting, but definitely not a modern-style kids book. It's not a bad message and wouldn't upset a child, but it's too long. And it's not popular nowadays to like clowns.
Try to make people happy.
Why do birds have feathers? This book doesn't know.
There's no moralizing to it, but also no indication of why this happened to the birds. Just that at some point they didn't have feathers, and then they had feathers. Ta-da.
None.
