meh

On the last page, she is sitting on the edge of a pond, surrounded by animals that are just chilling with her. It's kind of weird and looks disturbing, because she's maybe 6 or 8 years old, without supervision, next to a snake... Who knows what other creatures could be lurking in the bushes other than that fawn? Bears? Foxes? Something dangerous could be out there.

It's a really sweet message, but to get there they had to jump through so many hoops and pad the book with so many unrelated things like baking cakes and dances and accordion music. The story just meanders before it gets there. It's not a bad story; it just doesn't go anywhere.

The main character is a jerk, and the main character gets karma. Maybe children like this kind of sociopathic protagonist and the ensuing comeuppance.

Why do stories where the clever person wins always seem to end up with the clever person lying, and the other person being phenomenally stupid?? Why does a trickster have to completely, full-on, lie? There's nothing clever about lying to an idiot.

It's kind of boring and really wordy for a little kid. It's interesting from an anthropological standpoint, but it's not gripping enough for a young child.

There's no real story, just a series of events that happen when she visits her grandparents. It's kind of boring. I'm really not sure how something this banal came from the same author as The Phantom Tollbooth and The Dot and the Line, both fascinatingly weird stories.

It's kind of nice in that it's the story of a male authority figure performing the typically "motherly" task of putting a child to sleep. And this is very easily relatable, with nothing explicitly saying that Big is Little's father, or grandfather, or uncle, or anything specific. But because it's so generic, there's not much to it. Basically, the kid keeps telling the adult, "I love you this much," and the adult keeps responding, "Well, I love you this much," and it's always more.

It seems to be trying to say that the world is just and that the truth will win out in the end, but its real message boils down to: Authority figures are unreasonable and won't believe you.

It's super wordy for young kids (actually, in general, really). It's a boring story with no real point to it, retold in a very authentic way, which means that it includes a bunch of words that nobody really cares about.

This book can be taken in a couple different ways. I definitely understand both of them.