Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse

To me, Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse is a five-star children’s book. The characters are a significant aspect of this book. All of the characters are mice, which removes need for race and ethnicity. However, human traits were still incorporated to the mice’s characters. For example, Lilly’s teacher, Mr. Slinger, has a mustache, glasses, and dresses in fancy shirts and ties. This allows for subconscious understanding that Mr. Slinger is a male adult, but also allows for mouse characteristics. Another aspect of the book I liked was the message. Being kind, even if you are angry, is one lesson from the book. Lilly becomes angry and upset when Mr. Slinger takes her purse and sunglasses for part of the class. Due to her strong emotions show more at that point, Lilly draws a mean picture of her teacher. When she finds a nice note from Mr. Slinger in her purse, she feels horrible for even making that mean drawing of him. Afterwards, she apologizes to her teacher and he forgives her. This is a great, simple example of accepting and making up for your actions. show less

Summary: Lilly is so excited to show her classmates the gifts her grandmother gave her: sparkly sunglasses, three shiny quarters, and a purple plastic purse that plays music when it's opened. But when Lilly can't contain herself and wait until show-and-tell, Lilly's teacher takes her things to keep them in her desk for the day. Lilly is so upset that she makes a mean note and drawing about her teacher, and slips it into his bag. When she gets her things back at the end of the day, she finds a bag of snacks and a note from her teacher inside of her bag that says that she had a rough day, but tomorrow would be better. Lilly feels awful, and she makes it up to her teacher the next day with a nice apologetic note and drawing, and some show more homemade cheese snacks. Then she finally gets to share her things with the class during show-and-tell, and everyone loves them, including her teacher.

Review: A great book about handling emotions. The story is very cute, and you can't help but love Lilly; she's such a fun character, and everyone can relate to how she is feeling throughout the book. I love how Kevin Henkes's illustrations are full of fun little details that add to the story, yet are still simple enough so that they do not overwhelm young children. A cute and original story, with a message for readers that is not preachy. All in all, a wonderful book.

Central Idea of Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse: Always take a moment to think before you act, especially when you're upset, so that you don't do something that you will regret. show less

Kevin Henkes captures the emotions and thought process of children perfectly through Lilly in this book. Lilly loves her teacher, and loves everything about school. One day, she goes shopping with her grandmother and can not wait to show off her new things at school. When her teacher repeatedly tells her not now, Lilly gets impatient and shows off her new stuff anyway. Her teacher takes them away, causing Lilly to become furious and lash out. When she gets her stuff back at the end of the day, she feels guilty that she was so angry, and plans to remedy it. This book is great for teaching new vocabulary words, as well as teaching lessons such as patience.

I really liked the message that “Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse” is sending to it's audience. Lilly is a young mouse (girl) that is infatuated with her new purple plastic purse. When she decides to bring her purple plastic purse in for show and tell she is too eager to share and blurts out in the middle of class. The teacher takes her purse away from her with the intent to return it to her at the end of the day. These actions by the teacher and Lilly can be used to show young readers that in class, it is polite to raise your hand and wait your turn to participate. A second message that is conveyed to the audience by the author is how to settle a difficult situation. Lilly knows that writing the mean letter to her teacher was wrong. show more She attempts to correct her actions by writing a new letter to give to her teacher with baked goods. This can show the reader that we can show remorse for our wrong actions by apologizing to those who we have hurt or offended.
Not only was the moral learnings from this book great, but the illustrations enhanced the reading experience. By including Lilly's letter to her teacher and showing the mean drawings, the reader understands how frustrated Lilly is with her teacher. Lastly, the second letter Lilly writes to her teacher is shown with color and show what she likes about her teacher. This is a great way for the author to show the audience how Lilly has changed from her initial letter and shows that Lilly understands that her actions were wrong. show less

I really liked this book for a couple reasons. First, I really liked the illustrations in this book because I felt that they were very fitting to the story. The illustrations helped the readers visualize the different emotions that Lily felt while she was both angry and happy about the school. The illustrations also allowed the readers to see what the letters that Lily wrote looked like. Additionally, I really liked the characters that were in this book and found them to be very well developed and relatable. I was able to relate with Lily because when I was younger I would also create my own classroom in my house because I knew I also wanted to be a teacher. I believe that the main message of this story is to teach children that they show more can’t get mad and angry whenever they don’t get their way. show less

Lilly learns a little about forgiveness when she treats her teacher poorly, and he's nice to her anyway. This book shows the positive impact a teacher can have on a child's life, and helps demonstrate positive conflict resolution skills for students who may struggle with such things. The vocabulary is unexpected, using higher-level words occasionally than I would've first expected. Overall, an enjoyable book that almost makes you forget the characters are talking mice-children. Almost. :)

I enjoyed this book tremendously especially because of the plot. The plot was wonderful, and the suspense the reader felt was great for a children's book. This occurred when Lilly drew a picture and wrote a sentence to her teacher showing how mad she was at him for taking her purse. As a reader it made you on the edge of your seat just wishing she would not give him the note. The reader had to keep reading in order to see what happened the next day of school. Another reason I enjoyed this story was because of the characters. Lilly was just a young mouse(child) in the story that has temper changes but was obviously sweet at heart. Mr. Slinger was a teacher that showed tremendous patience and forgiveness with Lilly to teach her a lesson. show more The main idea of the story was to show children that you should think before you act. show less