Richard Cowdrey

In the early pandemic, my kids were absolutely addicted to the Cincinnati Zoo's daily broadcasts, and they adore Fiona the hippo. We were excited to find these bright and cheerful books imagining her adventures at the zoo. This particular installment is about learning to remember to be a good host on your birthday.

In my opinion, this was a good book because it told a great story at a good pace with fabulous illustrations to go along with them. In the book, a dog named Marley is determined win the town Easter Egg hunt. The mayor of the town announces that there is a special Easter Egg that is decorated differently and quite larger than the rest of the Easter Eggs. The person that finds the special egg will win the entire hunt. Marley runs through the grocery store getting egg all over himself, the show more bakery where he gets purple and pink frosting all over him, and finally, the party store where he gets confetti all over him. When it is time for all of the egg hunt participants to gather back to the town square to see who the winner is, the mayor is informed that no one found the special egg. Marley is then pulled up on stage because he looks like an Easter Egg with all of the frosting and confetti he has on him. Marley is so excited to be on stage that he jumps up on the mayor. When he jumps on the mayor, the mayor's hat is knocked off of him and it is revealed that the egg was under hidden under the mayor's hat! Marley then wins the egg hunt and is very happy. The main idea of this story is to not give up on a mission. Marley looked all over town for the special egg and he eventually found it. I really liked the illustrations in this book. There was one part of the book where Marley was running and the text says, "His tongue hung out of his mouth and his ears flapped wildly as he flew down the street." The picture to go along with the book really does look like he flying. The way he's positioned in this illustrations, it looks like he's about to jump right off of the page. I also really liked the language in the book. There were a lot of Easter puns such as "eggceptional" and "eggstraordinary." show less

Beautiful illustrations!! Such a cute book with a fun little story.

Summary:
This book tells about when Frosty the snowman returned following the original story that claims "He came back again one day". Dad goes back to his childhood using Frosty's magic snow boy and snow pup were alive to play hid and go seek. They decide to have a snowball fight when they notice that snow pup is missing. They find him asleep under a tree before it's time for Frosty and his friends to leave again.

Personal Reaction:
This is a fun book to read aloud to first or second show more graders.

Classroom Extension Ideas:
1. This would make a good story for the winter time. After reading the story the class could draw a winter picture. "What wintertime is to me"

2. As a class we could write our own winter story show less