K.R. Knight

When you'll buy almost any book your toddler daughter wants at the grocery store, twenty years later you may find yourself holding on to strange, impossible-to-shelve things like this: a Care Bears board book with a Cheer Bear puppet attached in the middle.

Rather than a story, it's more an interactive experience, with the puppet asking the child to count and find objects on the page that are different colors and shapes. In theory you can use Cheer Bear to gesture toward parts of the page or show more interact with the child by shaking hands and hugging. My big fingers, constricted by the frame of the book, have trouble getting the puppet arms to do much more than clap.

There's a certain goofy appeal, but it doesn't last long. show less

Oooh, this looks so baaaaad! The art is over-rendered to the point of being ugly. Eeyore has so much tone and so many wrinkles that he starts to look nude instead of being a donkey that doesn't wear clothes. Weirdly uncomfortable!

And the story isn't great either. Once again Eeyore's tail is lost, this time up in a tree. A Super Sleuth is added every page to give a counting aspect as they try different things to get the tail down. The problem is that the author couldn't seem to decide between show more a story in rhyme or a story in prose, so she just throws couplets in every so often, and that just grates on me.

And then to really annoy me, the publisher reused the same ISBN (1403781761 / 9781403781765) on several different books including the very similarly titled but definitely distinct My Friends Tigger & Pooh: Count on Us! (a book where the Super Sleuths count insects, butterflies, flowers and honey pots). It was a hassle getting it sorted out on LibraryThing and Goodreads.

(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

This was a fun little book to read with my kids. It is a short little book about the many animals that can be located and discovered in Africa. My children enjoyed listening to it as I read it to them for their 20 minutes of reading time. They learned a few new things and so did I. I think it is a good book for any child that has an interest in learning more about the animals within the world that they live.

From the Hercules beetle of South America to the hissing cockroach of Madagascar, children—and adults, too—will enjoy learning about some of the creepy, crawly, and of course, amazing insects found around the world! Written for children ages 6-9, this book represents one installment of a nature series that pairs reading and scientific curiosity. Each page boasts artfully captured photographic images of the insects in their native habitats, illustrating not only the finite details of the show more species but also the environment in which they can be found. The text is constructed with descriptive language that conveys sound, emotion, and useful analogies to pique children’s interest and enhance understanding. Despite relatively short sentence structure and preponderance of “sight words,” there are a number of content-specific vocabulary terms that are likely to pose challenges for inexperienced readers. As such, this visually and textually detailed “easy reader” provides a fantastic opportunity for children and adults to share in an educational experience by joining together to read. show less