Betty G. Birney

A stiff riff on the fable of the ant and the grasshopper has rabbit refusing to share the bounty of his garden until a frost threatens to destroy his harvest and his friends share their labor to save the crop. Rabbit shares his veggies out of gratitude, but then Pooh starts pushing for the honey that is sitting in the pantry also.

Pooh, you Commie ol' bear!

Are you pushing for a socialist redistribution of income and wealth? What about emphasizing instead that the Hundred-Acre Wood is in need show more of a system of currency so rabbit can profit from sales of his surplus and use the proceeds to hire minimum wage day laborers and purchase crop insurance?

Republicans, forget about Maus and get on this ASAP!

(My Pooh Project: I love Winnie the Pooh, and so does my wife. Having a daughter gave us a chance to indoctrinate her into the cult by buying and reading her every Pooh book we came across. How many is that? I’m going to count them this year by reading and reviewing one every day and seeing which month I finally run out. Track my progress here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/23954351-rod-brown?ref=nav_mybooks&she... ) show less

I selected this for my book club, only belatedly realizing it's number two in a series. Sigh. I always try to do the first book but oh well.

This is part of the rather odd trend of cutting chapter books down to beginning chapters. I find this trend odd and rather pointless since, if they're trying to attract a previous fan base, those kids are unlikely to be familiar with the characters and if they're trying to build a new fan base the books are really quite close together in reading level show more and by the time the kids move on to the older chapter series they're likely to have lost interest. However, they are useful beginning chapter books and I've bought quite a few of them - the younger series of Hank Zipzer (Here's Hank), Judy Moody (Judy Moody and Friends) and Humphrey's Tiny Tales (Humphrey).

Also, I've never read the original Humphrey books, I just know they're about a class hamster and their popularity seems to rise and fall with regularity.

SO, what is this book about? Humphrey is hanging out in his cage and watching the class doings with interest when he learns that the kids are going to do experiments, he's going home with Richie for the weekend and Richie is....going to do an experiment on HIM! Humphrey is very worried about this, even more so when he gets to Richie's house and discovers they have a very playful and scary new puppy. But once the experiment gets underway and Richie's uncle, the school janitor, helps Humphrey feel more at home, things seem to be going well. But then disaster strikes and only Humphrey can fix the experiment - if he can get past his fear of the puppy. What will Humphrey do?

Verdict: So, honestly I found this book to be....boring. Nothing much happened, it was rather repetitive and I kind of trudged through it. But kids who are struggling to move into chapter books will find this a good choice. The language and plot is simple so they can concentrate on their reading skills without losing track of what's happening, there's enough mild humor and silliness to keep them reading, and there are only a few, easily identifiable characters. It's a good choice for my younger book club, which has a lot of struggling readers and I'll continue adding these titles to our collection.

ISBN: 9780399252020; Published 2014 by G. P. Putnam/Penguin; Borrowed from another library in my consortium show less

Piglet breaks one of Pooh's honeypots and lies about it, saying a Heffalump broke into Pooh's house and stole it. Next thing you know the Pooh friends form a raging mob plotting Heffalump genocide.

Too dark and too true for these troubled times.

(My Pooh Project: I love Winnie the Pooh, and so does my wife. Having a daughter gave us a chance to indoctrinate her into the cult by buying and reading her every Pooh book we came across. How many is that? I’m going to count them this year by show more reading and reviewing one every day and seeing which month I finally run out. Track my progress here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/23954351-rod-brown?ref=nav_mybooks&she... ) show less

Tigger introduces a new bouncing game but becomes sulky when it turns out someone else is better at it. His friends have to massage his ego and find something else he's good at to feed his brittle ego. I can't decide if its snowflake maintenance or diva duty.

Update: I'm 50 books into the Pooh Project and a visual guesstimate says I'm not even a quarter of the way through all the books on the bookshelf yet. Onward!

(My Pooh Project: I love Winnie the Pooh, and so does my wife. Having a show more daughter gave us a chance to indoctrinate her into the cult by buying and reading her every Pooh book we came across. How many is that? I’m going to count them this year by reading and reviewing one every day and seeing which month I finally run out. Track my progress here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/23954351-rod-brown?ref=nav_mybooks&she... ) show less