Claudia Rueda

I don't know why I picked this up at the thrift shop, but I've got to call my mother to thank her for not traumatizing my childhood by reading me this particular nursery rhyme. The illustrations are especially horrifying.

A little old granny smirks evilly as she stalks and consumes increasingly larger creatures until she dies, presumably of intestinal rupture. But based on her deathbed expression, I suspect she eventually rises to join the ranks of the undead.

Though traditional folk and fairy tales are part of our shared culture, it's difficult to find a version simple enough to share with toddlers in a meaningful way. Huff & Puff makes this look easy. With sparse and straightforward text (only one line per plain white page),

"First pig building a house."

"First pig inside the house."

"One wolf huffing and puffing,"

and delightfully innocent-looking pigs, you'd think that Huff & Puff couldn't get any better. But wait, there's more. Each time the wolf show more comes along, the reader is presented with the wall of the house (straw, stick and brick) and a hole for, you guessed it, huffing and puffing! The reader is the wolf! All the illustrations are drawn with a wolf's-eye view, including the birthday cake with candles that awaits the wolf on the final page.

"Three pigs and one wolf are happy."

Awww.

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This little book about opposites hasn't convinced me. The illustrations are like silhouettes with eyes, in four "colors" - black, white, grey and orange. The thrust of the story is that what is big to one might very well be small to another, a very basic empathy experience. In and of itself there is probably nothing to say against that, but the way it is presented is oddly off - neither our 5-year-old nor our 3-year-old nor our 1-year-old have latched on to this book in any way. I am not so show more sure which age group the author had in mind. The illustrations and scarcity of text would indicate a very young audience, but the message is lost on them. To an audience that is old enough to get the message, however, the presentation is not appealing anymore. In short: Not our cup of tea. show less

"It's time to go to sleep," said mother bear.
"No," said little bear. "I don't want to go to sleep."

As the two bears trudge through a landscape that slowly fills with snow, the mother bear explains all the reasons why they will sleep, and the little bear continues to discount them. Until at last, the wind and the snow become too much, and the little bear returns to their cave: "Mamma, I'm back...Winter is very long and you might get lonely."