Caldecott Award Honors

The alphabet is everywhere.

It's interesting, but not enough to look at more than once, as with many alphabet books. There's nothing further to it.

Message

None.

All babies want love.

The multiculturalism is almost Caldecott-bait. It's like it was specifically written to appeal to givers of children's book awards. It's not a bad message, actually, probably not a message at all.

Message

None.

Lackluster poems for every month.

It's pretty stereotypical. Very American, with the Fourth of July, baseball, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the obsession with Christmas in December. There's not really much to it, with no storyline or message.

Message

None.

Try hard and do your best.

It's a good story, there's just not much to it. It's not enough to hold my attention.

Message

Save up for things you need and you will succeed in buying them.

Textbook deus ex machina ending.

An inane, contrived story. They suddenly decide to move to a larger apartment. The end.

Message

None.

Mostly innocuous but uninteresting.

A highly repetitive book, which is par for the course from Margaret Wise Brown. Every single animal in the frigging world is going to sleep.

Message

None.

Even the king makes mistakes.

It really supports the idea of swallowing your pride and apologizing, accepting the blame for something. I really like that message.

Message

Take responsibility for things that you do, even if they're wrong.

Catch fish. Eat fish. Repeat.

It's descriptive. The pictures are all line drawings, very simple, with not a lot of detail. There's also not a lot of detail in the story.

Message

None.

Mundane walk through the forest with fanciful animals.

There's no real message. It doesn't really go anywhere. The animals don't really do anything. There aren't any characters. Nobody really has a personality.

Message

None.

Ode to capitalism.

It presupposes a world where mice are intelligent and humans exist but don't realize that the mice are intelligent, which is kind of a difficult world to live in when you realize that we kill mice for pretty trifling things. But, you know.

Message

Everybody has some skill of worth.