One Duck Stuck Review

This week, I'm reviewing One Duck Stuck by Phyllis Root and illustrated by my favorite ego-manical pencil wielding children's book illustrator Jane Chapman. One Duck Stuck is an animal counting book. The illustrations of this book are actually pretty good, but the writing in One Duck Stuck is atrocious. This disconnect between the author and illustrator is so obvious that it almost seems like the pictures in One Duck Stuck were meant for a different book! It is for that reason that this review will be done a little differently. After pointing out the most spectacularly bone headed sentence in the history of children's books, I will retell the story of One Duck Stuck by using only the pictures pulled from the book. These pictures seem to tell a much different story than the writer had intended.

The setting: The deep green marsh or sleepy, slimy marsh, depending on what part of the sentence you are in

The characters: One duck, 2 fish, 3 moose, 4 crickets, 5 frogs, 6 skunks, 7 snails, 8 possums, 9 snakes, 10 dragonflies, and the marsh

This page makes me want to vomit. There are four commas and three different ways in which the "marsh" is explained to the readers all in one sentence. Is it the "marsh" or the "sleepy, slimy marsh" or the "deep green marsh?" Its just so utterly, grammatically wrong that I am dumbfounded that any editor with any self-respect let this page get published in an actual real book. How could anyone think that sentence was okay? When I read this book to my daughter, I completely skip the "down by the deep green march" part because it is stylistically obnoxious.

Now that the duck is stuck, he shouts for help from anyone that can hear him. The animals respond by coming to the duck.

Two fish splash the duck in the face with water. No luck. Still stuck.

Three moose lick the duck on the head. No luck. Still stuck.

Four crickets hop over the duck. No luck. Still stuck.

Seven snails crawl on the duck and slime the duck with goo. No luck. Still stuck.

After getting splashed, licked, jumped over, and slimed, the duck just pulls his leg out. "Enough of this," says the duck. 

The illustration of this page is so confusing! In the story, all the animals team up and help the duck, but in the picture, that isn't happening. "The duck just plucked himself from the muck? What the f***? Why did all these animals try to help him if could just pull his leg out!?!?" 

And what does "spluck" even mean, anyway? Did the writer know that "pluck" is actually a word that can be used in the exact same context, means the same thing as what the writer thinks "spluck" means, and rhymes with "duck?" This is a situation where the writer of this book was over-thinking it.

In summation, a duck gets stuck and a bunch of animals help him get out. Nothing really special here. Despite the horrid grammar and odd illustrations that don't seem to show the same story that the narrator does, Lily loves this book. She gives it 5 out of 5 stars. It can be purchased at Amazon for $15.01 or you can find it at a used book store for a dollar. Just don't get stuck reading and rereading this book over and over again. Happy reading!

Down On The Farm Review

This week, I am reviewing Down on the Farm by Merrily Kutner, illustrated by Will Hillenbrand. I have chosen this seemingly innocuous book as a shining example of the second of three of my literature pet peeves that need to be remedied. This book is a cute book about a farm and has animal noises to teach to young kids. Great! I think that is important to learn. Unfortunately, that is really hard to concentrate on when you see this on the first page:

The second of my three literature pet peeves is the dedication.

The setting: I won't even dignify that with a response.

The characters: Goat, sheep, duck, dog, horse, the author's dead daughter, and Sheri Woodward, whoever the hell that is.

Have you ever made somebody a really nice present? Have you ever spent hours and hours on a gift for someone, putting love and time and energy into it, and then, rather than give it to that person to enjoy, you sell it to a publishing company for a ton of money but pretend that you made it for them? That's what a dedication page is. If you want to show someone how much they mean to you, you sit down and write a book and then give it to them. If you want to make money writing books, you sit down and write a book and then sell it. Do you see the subtle difference there? Those two sentiments are sort of mutually exclusive. Choose only one, my friends.

It was a hard day of working my typical middle class white collar job. I get home from work and see my daughter for the first time since I left in the morning. She is excited that I'm home, and she comes running over to see me with a book in hand for me to read to her. I've barely had a chance to walk through the door, but I love the way her face lights up when we snuggle up on the couch to read a book. We hop on the couch, open up the book, and BAM! Dead children. Just what I needed to think about today.

Now, some of you may be saying, "you are being too harsh on this woman. Her daughter died and maybe she loved farms. She wrote this book to get over her pain of losing her kid." Fine. I'll concede that as a possibility. Maybe that is true. Merrily could have very easily just mentioned that on the press tour for the book, but if she wanted that to be part of the story and for that emotion to be part of the book, then fine. I agree that people who lose their children are allowed to do pretty much anything they want. What about Will Hillebrand? Could you be any bigger of a douche bag than to try to dedicate your stupid pictures to anybody other than the author's dead child????? When Merrily decided to dedicate this book to her deceased daughter, Will should have just bowed out of the dedication game. Just give up, dude. Dedicate your next book to whoever the hell Sheri is. You look like a petty, clueless loser.... unless, of course, "down on the farm" is really just another way of saying "bought the farm", in which case, Will, you are equally as guilty as Merrily for dedicating this book to your dead friend. In fact, this whole book has just taken on a whole new sad and eerie meaning.

Dead horses.

Dead pigs. 

In summation, the rest of this book really isn't that bad. It's pretty cute minus some really bad rhyming attempts. Lily loves it and she gives it 5 out of 5 stars. You can pick up this book at Amazon for $6.26, which is $.01 for the book and $6.25 for the weight of the heart of the author that wrote it. For more horrible imagery that makes you want to cry when you thought you were going to laugh, check out my new one man show Josh Strangles a Clown. Happy reading!

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See Review

Today's children's book review is Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle. You'll notice right away that this is Bill Martin Jr's second book to be reviewed here and rightly so. This book is equally as mind-blowingly senseless as Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. In fact, one might even say that this book makes Chicka Chicka Boom Boom look like a coherently written story with great plot progression. Eric Carle, you may know, is a fairly famous children's book author. His greatest book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, is the only good book he has ever written, but Eric is not the first author in history to make a living off the accolades of one published title. After writing The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric spent the rest of his career trying to emulate its success with a giant steaming pile of published books such as Papa, Please Get The Moon For Me, The Foolish Tortoise, The Greedy Python, The Very Lonely Firefly, The Grouchy Ladybug, From Head to Toe, The Lamb and The Butterfly, The Very Quiet Cricket, etc... Seriously, have you heard of any of those books before? No, you haven't because they suck. Eric Carle is the Mark Bellhorn of children's book authors. If you swing at every single pitch, you'll strike out 177 times but you may also hit 17 home runs. Eric Carle has written one good book out of the 50 or so that he has had published in his career because every time he sees a bug or a random animal, he immediately pens a book by finding the first adjective that whacks him in the face. Hint, the one good book that he wrote isn't this one. Teaming up Eric Carle and Bill Martin Jr is like adding vinegar to ReaLemon 100% Lemon Juice. If you drink it, you will probably lose the ability to taste for at least 48 hours, and you may develop an acute fear of triangles. After reading an Eric Carle and Bill Martin Jr authored work, your brain will shut down, and you will slip into a coma to prevent damage to the cerebral cortex. It is the brain's way of protecting itself.

The setting: A giant white background where strangely primary-colored animals and people can co-exist

The characters: A brown bear, a red bird, a blue horse, a purple cat, a yellow duck, a goldfish, a white dog, a green frog, a black sheep, a creepy looking teacher (for some fucking reason), and inexplicably, a group of children that may or may not be ghosts

This book starts out pretty awesome with a brown bear that can talk. "I see a red bird looking at me," he says. Cool, the animals can talk. Let's ask the red bird what he can see.

Wait a second.... the brown bear just said that the red bird was looking at him. How can the red bird see a yellow duck looking at him if he's looking at the bear? Is the bear standing next to the duck, and if so, duck, get the heck out of there! The bear is going to eat you! Maybe the animals are standing in a giant circle and the red bird is looking at the bear and seeing a duck looking at him out of the corner of his eye. Or maybe the red bird is darting his eyes back and forth looking at the bear and the duck???? Well, what do the other animals see? Oh, they see other animals looking at them... again, how can they be looking at two different animals at once!

Wait, what? What the heck is that? I thought this book was about colors and animals. Where the hell did the teacher come from? Are these animals in a classroom? That can't be possible because there is a friggin' bear here! Maybe they are at the zoo.... but what zoo has a white dog or purple cat (other than the Stone Zoo?) Maybe they are out in the wild someplace where bears and ducks and cats co-mingle, but that doesn't explain how the friggin' goldfish got here! They aren't in the water because there's a red bird! WHAT IS GOING ON!

Well, of course YOU see children looking at you, you're a teacher! You're probably teaching a class. Wait a second.... Are the animals just drawings? Are they not real animals? Is this all like an imagination exercise with children drawing pictures of animals in primary colors?

NO!!!!! The children can't see all those things looking at them because all of those animals are looking at other animals, too! You can't be looking at three different things all at once! That's just not possible! Also, why is there a giant empty space under the bear and next to the frog? What is that all about? Am I supposed to draw in my own animal?

In summation, there are absolutely no blind animals in this book. They can all see other things. The illustrations are pretty crappy and the teacher is wicked creepy looking. The picture of the children is just down right scary. I think they might be some sort of hoard of zombie children. I can't really be sure. However, Lily loves this book, and she gives it 5 out of 5 stars. You can purchase Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? at Amazon for $8.09, but I would buy The Very Hungry Caterpillar at Amazon for $5.98, instead! You'll save over $2 on the book and $5 on Tylenol from the headache this book induces. Happy reading!

How Do Dinosaurs Review

This week, I am reviewing a collection of stories by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague. The story pictured above is How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? but my review will span the entire series and include How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon?, How Do Dinosaurs Play With Their Friends?, and How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms? These books are all essentially the same and have the same premise. The author and illustrator is the same and the pages that I've chosen to highlight could honestly be any page in any book. I really like these books when I don't give them too much thought, but as I begin to more deeply ponder the purpose and meaning of this series of books, I can't help but think about how stupid they are.

The setting: 65 million years ago

The characters: Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Dilophosaurus, Braciosaurus, Brontosaurus, Teradactyl, Kentosaurus, Gorgosaurus, Spinosaurus, Lambeosaurus, Deinonychus, Polacanthus, Obscurosaurus, Randomosaurus, and Madeuposaurus Rex

Yeah, that's right Mark! I bet at least one of your supposed "dinosaurs" in one of your books is completely made up! Prove that it isn't, then!

Okay, this is not how you clean up your room unless you are autistic (not that there is anything wrong with that). Also, how is lining up your toys cleaning up your room? Somebody is going to trip over those cars. You should put them in a box or a drawer or in the closet. Putting them in the middle of the floor in rows is no more clean then putting them in the middle of the floor not in rows. This is counterproductive.

I have never claimed to be father of the year other than the time on Facebook when I said that you should just give me my father of the year award, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't let my kids play with a freaking T-Rex! "He treats everyone in the friendliest way." I think you are confusing a Tyrannosaurus, which is a 23 foot tall, 8 ton meat eating monster that lived 65 million years ago and that is the most prolific carnivore in the history of time, more terrifying than any fictional creature conceived of in book or film, that can devour 500 pounds of triceratops in one bite with this guy:

I'm pretty sure that Jane and Mark went through a lot of trouble to make sure that dinosaurs are portrayed in the most accurate way possible from the name of the dinosaur right down to the color and relative size of the dinosaur and then completely ignored every single aspect of the dinosaur's actual behavior and instinct. That Tyrannosaurus would eat that kid and slide in one chomp!

Introducing the all new Ford Escape. Has the most available leg room of any car, house, or building in existence. It's a crossover. It crosses over the line between reality and utter absurdity. Also, is that dinosaur drinking out of a sippy cup?

More realism being portrayed in these books. A triceratops weighs about 7 tons. This mom is dragging a 7 ton triceratops by one foot. Seems totally possible.

This is the biggest doctor's office I have ever seen. Just a side note. While referencing all of this dinosaur stuff through Google, every time I type in the name of a dinosaur, the third autocomplete that pops up is that name of the dinosaur that I typed in followed by "not real." What the hell is wrong society that people think dinosaurs didn't exist?

Okay, so why the heck do these books exist? I'm going to make the leap from dinosaurs to kids to explain the purpose of these books. Ready.... kids like dinosaurs. They are cool creatures because they don't exist. They are like unicorns or fairies. It doesn't matter that dinosaurs existed at one time. They are the same thing as leprechauns to the mind of a child. These books show dinosaurs doing bad behaviors and then saying that dinosaurs don't do that behavior so that at a later time when your obnoxious child does the same behavior you can say, "does a dinosaur throw down his cup at the table? No, he doesn't. Dinosaurs are nice to people, so you should be nice to people like dinosaurs." HOWEVER, that is just a giant load of bullshit for 3 reasons: 1) dinosaurs and people never existed at the same time so dinosaurs could never have interacted with the human environment in that way. Dinosaurs spent all day fighting and foraging for food so that they wouldn't die; 2) if dinosaurs existed now, they would destroy EVERYTHING! They would eat people and knock over buildings and run over buses and they would never once ever say "sorry" to anybody (didn't you see Jurassic Park 2?); and 3) if you need to use the fake made-up behavior of dinosaurs to control the behavior of your child, you are a shitty parent. Just give up and let your child throw their cup on the ground and not say they are sorry because one day your child will be smarter than you and they will remember the time you lied about dinosaurs being nice to people, and when they find out that the dinosaur thing was a lie, they will no longer have any incentive to have normal behaviors. Instead, give the real reasons to have good behavior like "this is the way normal, non-criminals behave in public" or "pick your cup up because you're making a mess, and when you make a mess, you have to clean it up because I don't want to spend all day cleaning up after you because then mommy and daddy are too tired to go to work and make money that we use to buy you nice toys and invest in a 529 plan so that we can afford to pay for your college education." There are real reasons for your children to not act like animals. "Because dinosaurs behave" is just a complete lie.

In summation, dinosaurs are magical beings that you should aspire to be like. Once I realized this was the point of these books, I decided that these books suck. They spend too much time depicting dinosaurs behaving in a negative way and saying "don't do this" rather than depicting dinosaurs behaving positively and saying "do this." Unfortunately, Lily loves them, and she gives them 5 out of 5 stars. You can pick up any one of these books at Amazon for various amounts of money. Happy reading!

How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food review

How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon review

How Do Dinosaurs Play With Their Friends review

How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms review

How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night review

How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Dogs review

How Do Dinosaurs Learn Their Colors review

How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Birthday review

How Do Dinosaurs Count To Ten review

How Do Dinosaurs Say I Love You review

How Do Dinosaurs Go To School review

How Do Dinosaurs Laugh Out Loud review

How Do Dinosaurs Play All Day review

How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Cats review

How Do Dinosaurs Stay Safe review

How Do Dinosaurs Eat Cookies review

How Do Dinosaurs Learn To Read review

How Do Dinosaurs Say I'm Mad

How Do Dinosaurs Go To The Doctor review

Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten Review

This week, I am reviewing Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten by Joseph Slate and Ashley Wolff. Miss Bindergarten is a timeless classic story told generation after generation and passed down through one's children. It is full of drama and suspense, but also is a lighthearted romantic comedy with superheroes and space spiders.... okay... I have to confess that I actually didn't read Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten because the name of this book is so incredibly friggin' stupid that I couldn't bare to open it! Seriously... BINDERGARTEN! All you did was swapped the K for a B! Its not even a real word or phrase or name.

The setting: Who the hell knows? I didn't read the book, remember. I'll just take a wild guess and say a kindergarten classroom.

The characters: Well, Miss Bindergarten has to be a character. There is a dog and a some sort of hippo or dinosaur or something... there's a little alligator and possibly a woodchuck or some sort of beaver thing. Also, I see a parrot on the cover and some fish. That's it... I got nothing.

So how can I possibly review a book that I haven't read, you ask? Easy. I don't need to open a book and see its pages in order to render some sort of judgment about the book. I can use the exterior of the book as the primary means of formulating an opinion about the book. I believe there is some sort of age old saying about judging a book by its cover and how you should always do it, so here we go.

Bindergarten. Yes, you read that correctly. The authors of this book clearly took their sweet time coming up with this book and title. They took the word "kindergarten" and just swapped out the first letter until they came up with something that sounded like a real word. They were able to get to the letter that they needed for this story after going through all 1 letter that comes before B. Brilliant laziness. Forget for a moment that nobody on the face of the planet is named Bindergarten. Need proof? Here is the listing for a search of any phone numbers for anybody with the last name Bindergarten.

There aren't any. No match! Zero! Anyway, forget that for a moment. Couldn't they have come up with a different word that is actually a word to rhyme with kindergarten? I submit the following for your consideration.

Miss Linda Martin Gets Ready For Kindergarten
Miss Barton Gets Ready For Kindergarten
Miss Geddy Gets Ready (For Kindergarten)
Miss Alcibiades the Spartan Gets Ready For Kindergarten

And those are just the ones I rattled off while writing this review! If I gave more than 15 seconds of thought to this, I could probably have about a dozen other titles for this book, proving definitely that this author spent less than 15 seconds coming up with the title. As a result, Joseph Slate has earned a special place in the annals of Dads Read Upside Down by being the author of the worst titled book in the history of children's books. Congratulations Joseph. The title of this book is truly horrifying, but not quite as horrifying as this:

Miss Bindergarten Stays Home From Kindergarten
Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten
Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the Last Day of Kindergarten
Miss Bindergarten Has a Wild Day in Kindergarten
Miss Bindergarten Takes a Field Trip With Kindergarten
Miss Bindergarten Plays a Circus With Kindergarten
Miss Bindergarten's Craft Center

Apparently, Joe ran out of steam with that last one. Those are the actual titles of the sequels to this amazingly titled book.

In summation, I didn't actually read this book, so I have no idea what its about. I just couldn't get pass the title. However, because this is a book about the alphabet (or so I have been told), Lily gives it 5 out of 5 stars. You can pick up Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten at Amazon for $6.29, which is exactly $6 more than the amount of money Joseph Slate could have earned in the time he took to come up with the title of this book. Happy reading!

Goodnight Gorilla Review

This week, I am reviewing a childhood favorite Good Night Gorilla by Peggy Rathman. It is really hard to find a lot of fault with a book that only has 9 words in it, but if you think that difficulty of finding issues with a book will stop me, you haven't been reading my blog very carefully! For starters, yes this book only has 9 words in total. Count with me! Gorilla is 1, elephant is 2. hyena is 3, dear is 4, lion is 5, zoo is 6, armadillo is 7, giraffe is 8, and goodnight is 9! "But Josh," you say, ""Good" and "night" are very clearly two different words on the cover above. Shouldn't they be counted as two words?" Nope. "Goodnight" is what you say to somebody when you or they are going to sleep. "Good night" is what you say when you are telling somebody that you had a "good night" at the widget factory. Peggy doesn't get credit for two separate words there just because she misused them!

The setting: The strangest zoo ever that has a hyena, a mouse, and an armadillo

The characters: Gorilla, an absent minded zoo night watchman, the night watchman's wife, Giraffe, Hyena, Elephant, Lion, a mouse, Armadillo, and a mysterious disappearing and reappearing key chain

This story begins with Gorilla taking a key chain off of the stupid night watchman's belt as the watchman goes from animal to animal making sure everything is okay in the zoo. However, the absent minded watchman, who clearly has some sort of neck issue because he never looks behind him at any point in the story, is followed by Gorilla opening all the cages of the other animals. 

As you can see from the page above, each cage that is opened by Gorilla is opened with a key on the key chain that Gorilla stole. However, after each cage is opened, the corresponding key is left by Gorilla in the cage. After getting out of their cages, the animals follow the zoo watchman to his house, which appears to be in the zoo. Zoo watchman is a shitty job, indeed!

The animals follow him into his house through a door that is conspicuously left open...

And follow him into his bedroom. Somehow the zoo watchman still hasn't turned around to see the animals all snuggled up and ready to sleep. Also, somehow the lion hasn't eaten him yet. However, the zoo watchman, after a long day of not watching out for the animals in the zoo, apparently is exhausted and sleeps through his wife's revelation that there are a ton of animals in his house. She brings all the animals out and back to their cages, even Gorilla.

BUT WHAM! Look at that!!! Gorilla has the keys and key chain again! How did that happen? Did the wife not collect the keys left in each cage when she brought the animals back, and if she didn't, HOW DID SHE CLOSE THE CAGES! So what are we left to think? Evidently Gorilla pick-pocketed the zoo watchman's wife like he did the zoo watchman and she didn't realize it either? These are the worst zoo watchmen in history! I mean, seriously. Also, what the heck is that little mouse doing? Is he dragging a banana behind him? Is he Gorilla's little banana lackey? Why is there a mouse in the zoo, anyway? Who the hell goes to a zoo to see a mouse? That's just absurd. 

AH! The lion is eating that elephant! Somebody help!

In summation, Gorilla is a master pick-pocketer that thieves his way into the zoo watchman's bed. I don't get it. Children too young to read won't understand the intricacies of the human animal relationship, and children old enough to understand it can read more than 9 words. Unfortunately, Lily loves this book, probably because I add about 10 extra pages of dialogue to it, different each time I "read" it to her. She gives this 5 out of 5 stars, so make sure to pick up your copy of Good Night, Gorilla today. It can be found BEFORE Goodnight Moon in your local book store because "Good" with a space comes before "Goodn" alphabetically. SCAM! You can also buy it at Amazon for $7.19, 80 cents cheaper than the cover price above. Happy reading!

When I Was Little Review

This week, I am reviewing When I Was Little: A Four-Year-Old's Memoir of Her Youth by Jamie Lee Curtis. Funny... There is a very talented actress that is also named Jamie Lee Curtis. You would think that since that name is already taken, this author would come up with some sort of a pen name. Wait, what? This is the same Jamie Lee Curtis that is a famous actress? Why the heck is she writing children's books? This book review will serve to illuminate the rationale behind 1 of 3 of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to literature. That pet peeve is the celebrity author.

The setting: The mind of a small child

The characters: Who cares?! This book was written by somebody that can act, so it must be good!

Celebrity authors become authors of books for one of two reasons. Either they didn't write the book at all but their name is being used as the author to sell more books by a ghost writer.... or they actually wrote the book and somehow managed to get it published. I actually believe Jamie Lee Curtis did the second one. Here is a person that has been in television shows, big budget movies, and Activia commercials... but this is a children's book. How does any of that experience translate into being an author? Hint.... it doesn't.

Brilliant. Jamie Lee Curtis really has a way with words. Seriously, you gain a ton of skills and experience in one thing every single day of your life and then you turn around and do something completely different. The only reason you would do that is because you think that writing children's books is a challenge that you can easily overcome. In fact, even the President of the Untied States has written a children's book called Of Thee I Sing available at (Amazon for $12.95.) The freaking President wrote a children's book in all his spare time because evidently writing children's books is something you can do between a briefing on how everybody wants to destroy America and a briefing on how the national debt is going to destroy America.

Something I forgot to mention in that last paragraph is why celebrity authors annoy me, especially when it comes to children's books. Do you see the page above? That is a shining example of how this book completely sucks. That little girl is taking a bath and shaving her leg with a cucumber facial mask on. Could you please stereotype little girls in a more offensive way, Jamie? Why don't you have the girl baking a pie or something? 

These celebrities that write children's books do so because they think it is a challenge that they can meet, but they are completely wrong. It is not extremely hard to write a children's book, but it is monumentally hard to write a good one. Also, this child's parents let her eat Chee-tos? These are the worst parents ever. There are over 6 billion people on earth and of those 6 billion people, the most skilled and trained and experienced writers are all vying to have children's books published. They are spending hundreds of thousands of hours writing and rewriting and coming up with new concepts and ideas for connecting with children... but the celebrity author bypasses all of that hard work and studying. They jump the line because of their name and ultimately sell an inferior product to people at a higher cost.

Okay, this four year old is just obnoxious. You are four years old and you think you "know" who you are already? Wow. The process of self discovery is a life long journey that can never really be achieved. The Chinese culture has a word "kaizan" which loosely translates to mean continuous improvement. The embodiment of the term means that you never really achieve what you're searching for because you are always searching to be better at what you do. There is always a next step. There is always a higher goal that you should set your sights on as an individual person or a corporation as a whole, and this four year old little girl has reached her maximum potential at the ripe old age of four? I don't think so.

In summation, who cares what happened in the book? It was written by Jamie Lee Curtis! She was in that show that one time, so this book must be good! However, it isn't. It kind of sucks, especially when the little girl is riding in the back seat of her car without a car seat or booster. She has horrible parents. Unfortunately, Lily actually really likes this book, so she gives it 5 out of 5 stars. It is available at Amazon for $6.29: $4.00 for the book and $2.29 that pays for the celebrity endorsement. Happy reading!