The Barker twins have very different personalities. Moffie is bossy and competitive while Morgan is more easygoing and friendly, so they experience the first week of school quite differently but still manage to learn to appreciate their sibling's different take on it.

It's not a bad story, but the characters never really took hold on me in this book or any of the others I read in their series, and my daughter seemed to lose interest in them quickly also.

FOR REFERENCE:

Rated "Indifferent" in our old book database by Rod; rated "Good" by Adelia. ( )

morgan focuses on earning gold stars and not spending time with other people while moffat focuses on working with his friends. morgan gets tired of not having any friends so she starts to work on making friends and muffet helps her and he ends up getting a gold star.
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The Barkers are twin dogs that are very much alike in their looks yet extremely different. These characters are also based on dePaola’s family. Morgan and Moffat are two of his Welsh terrier dogs. ( )

I liked this book a lot. I thought that this book would be great for a young child to read or hear because it expresses situations that could happen to them. The sentences are very simple (short), and there is a lot of dialogue exchanged so the reader can tell exactly how the characters feel through out the story. For example, “ ‘How was your first day at school?’ Mama asked. ‘I got a old star because I know all my colors,’ Moffie said. ‘And I met a new friend. His name is Billy. He likes dinosaurs too,’ Morgie told Mama.” I also liked how the illustrations were set up in the book. Most pictures are in a box, and sometimes there were more than one box on a page. It allowed you to see all aspects of the same situation from different viewpoints.
The central message of this book is that being the best at everything and knowing everything is not always what is important. Moffie knew every single question that her teacher asked her, and made sure she was the first to stand up and tell the whole class. She took pride and was snooty about being the smartest in the class but soon no one in the class wanted to be around her. ( )

I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was a great book to read to kids when they first start school and have gitters and butterflies in their stomach. This book would ease them and I also think it can provide some giggles and laughs too. I think this would also be a great book for parents to read to their children before the first day of school also.
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