Extremely Cute Animals Operating Heavy Machinery

Rating

Not sure what this one is trying to say.

I honestly don't know who this is aimed towards. There are a bunch of extremely cute animals who are being bullied at the playground, mostly what appears to be... some kind of kangaroo, perhaps? The animals are drawn in a unusual style. She's building a sand castle and this bully comes and starts knocking it down. Her friends help her rebuild it. The battle between her friends and the bullies--this war of build, destroy, build, destroy--keeps escalating as they make bigger and bigger sand castles. Eventually, the extremely cute animals (the builders) get extremely mad and they go and get massive amounts of heavy machinery, like a bulldozer, a heavy-lift helicopter, and some kind of crane. Overnight, they build a massive amusement park plus sand castle. There's a gate, and they don't allow the bullies in. Then they offer to allow the bullies in, and the bullies are nervous because they know the other animals were mad at them, but everybody plays happily at the amusement park. There's a section devoted to building and destroying sand castles.

Again, I'm not really sure who this is written for. I don't know why it's stressed that the animals are extremely cute. Honestly, I don't find them very cute. I'm not really a fan of his method of depicting characters. Is this book maybe pandering to girls? 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. The whole, "I'm building a full-on amusement park in a day" is kind of a deus ex machina ending. It's not great literature but it doesn't have a bad message. It's just pretty solidly middle-of-the-road.

Message

Don't be mean.

Authors
Publication Year
2016
Age Range
4-8
Number of Pages
40
Number of words on a typical page
20