Toon Tellegen

A cute little book with short stories about animals. What’s not to love? A lot.
I got this as a gift from my friend because she knew I was going through a rough time and wanted to cheer me up.

Het liefst van al (the sweetest of them all) is written bij Toon Tellegen. This author is known for all his short stories about animals here in The Netherlands. He mostly writes about elephants, squirrels, frogs, bees and all sorts of animals that can live in a forest.

I had never read anything by him and I always wanted to try some of his work. The gift my friend gave me was actually a good thing! Unfortunately, this isn’t for me. I can’t bare little stories that don’t make any sense even when you aren’t even trying to and just enjoying it. They all felt kind of the same and I just couldn’t handle it when an elephant went to visit a bee in its honeycomb. Like how is that even possible? This was a big miss for me.

If you want to read about animals that have no correlation with each other but still become friends? Read this. Otherwise don’t waste your time.
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Billed as a Dutch storybook for children. This is a book of short stories, no more than 1-3 pages each. I read the first 5-6 and thought how odd! There didn't seem to be a storyline. All of the stories have to do with animals, but seemingly there is no plot. For example, one story has squirrel and elephant sitting talking and squirrel is trying to get a secret from elephant--maybe he did and maybe he didn't!? The last line of the story: and then there was a big splash!???? Most of the endings of the story appeared as if they just stopped the story midstream or did not produce a resolution. I know that my grandchildren would not like these stories--they would have a million questions. It's perhaps that I, myself, do not like open-ended books? I'm sure I'm probably overthinking this book! 153 pages… (more)